Kennan II - Mr. Hippisley and the Open DoorGeorge Kennan, American Diplomacy II. MR. HIPPISLEY AND THE OPEN DOOR In the first of these lectures I spoke about the Spanish American War as a sort of preface to the diplomacy of the first half of the twentieth century. I wish now to talk about another episode in American diplomatic history, from those same years at the turn of the century, an episode which had this same preface-like quality: the dispatch of John Hay's Open Door notes. I think you will all remember the general nature of this occurrence, as it has been usually understood in this country. It was something like this: At a time when the European powers were setting about to partition China and to appropriate parts of it to their exclusive use, the American Secretary of State; surmising their purposes, anticipated them and in part frustrated their design by sending them notes which called them to observe in China the principle of the Open Door - the principle of equal rights for all, that is - and of the territorial and administrative integrity of China. The interpretation put upon this incident by public opinion at the time and carried down into the textbooks of our own day is well summed up by Mark Sullivan in his study entitled Our Times: The "open-door" policy in China was an American idea. It was set up in contrast to the "spheres-of-influence" policy practiced by other nations.... The "open-door" is one of the most creditable episodes in American diplomacy, an example of benevolent impulse accompanied by energy and shrewd skill in negotiation. Not one of the statesmen and nations that agreed to Hay's policy wanted to. It was like asking every man who believes in truth to stand up - the liars arc obliged to be the first to rise. Hay saw through them perfectly; his insight into human nature was one of his strongest qualities.1 Now, bearing in mind this interpretation, let us take a closer look at what really happened. At the end of 1897 and the beginning of 1898 there was a real and justifiable fear that China would be partitioned. It was in those months that the Russians made evident their determination to have a special position in Manchuria, including a naval base at Port Arthur and a commercial port at the present Dairen, both to be connected by railway with the new Trans-Siberian; that the Germans consolidated their control over the port of Kiaochow and their influence in the Shantung Peninsula; and that the French, coming up from the south, from the present Indochina, successfully negotiated with the Chinese government for the lease of a port, for railroad concessions, for the appointment of a French citizen as head of the Chinese postal services, and for other favors. These happenings naturally caused particular concern in London. Up to that time the British had been the overwhelming masters of the Chinese trade. They had 80 per cent of it; all the rest of the countries together, including ourselves, had only 20 per cent. Being in a favorable competitive position, British traders had always advocated the Open Door in China - that is, equality for everyone in customs treatment, harbor dues, etc., for the importation of consumption merchandise. Now they were not certain how this would all work out with these spheres of influence that other powers were acquiring. Would this operate to exclude British trade or would it not? This was not a simple question. Up to that time the main difficulties in the China trade had been with the local Chinese authorities in the interior, not with the actions of foreign powers. British merchants had long demanded of their own government that it ignore diplomatic proprieties, ignore the Chinese government in Peking, go right into the interior of China, up the great rivers, with its gunboats, and force the stubborn mandarins to remove the obstructions and exactions which they placed in the path of the movement of merchandise. If this was what the other powers were going to do in their spheres of influence, perhaps it was a good thing. Perhaps the British could even profit from it. But suppose those powers just opened up the interior to trade and kept it to themselves. Then things would be worse thin ever. The British government, itself, as distinct from the British merchants, had other worries arising out of these events - worries more serious than the complaints and anxieties of British commercial circles. These worries were strategic and political. British statesmen did not like the idea of a Russian naval base on the Gulf of Pechili. Where would all this end? Would it not lead to complete Russian domination of China? The British Foreign Office spoke its fears quite frankly in a secret communication to the czar's government: A great military Power which is coterminous for over 4,000 miles with the land frontier of China, including the portion lying nearest to its capital, is never likely to be without its due share of influence on the councils of that country. Her Majesty's Government regard it as most unfortunate that it has been thought necessary in addition to obtain control of a port which, if the rest of the Gulf of Pechili remains in hands so helpless as those of the Sovereign Power, will command the maritime approaches to its capital, and give to Russia the same strategic advantage by sea which she already possesses in so ample a measure by land.2 The Russians paid no attention to this communication and went right ahead with the realization of their plans. After considerable worry and debate the British government responded to this situation in the spring of 1898 in two ways: openly, by stressing the importance of the maintenance of the Open Door in China; covertly, by looking about for some sort of special agreement with some other power or powers for opposing Russia's strategic penetration of Chinese territory. But in the back of their minds they had still a third line of action, a line which they were somewhat reluctant to take at that time but which was being strongly pressed upon them by many of the British merchants in China and which they knew they would have to take if neither of the other methods worked - that was the development of a sphere of influence of their own in the Yangtze Valley, where their own trade was greatest and where they, too, would be able to exert a more direct influence on the government at Peking. By developing such a sphere of influence, they could at least make sure that they would not be excluded from the most important part of China, and there might be other advantages besides. In the spring of 1898 they still hoped - as I say - that it would not come to this, but they could not be too sure. Things were changing in China. The Open Door doctrine, the basis of British policy for many years, was beginning to show its limitations generally. In the old days it had been only a question of bringing in consumption goods for general distribution and sale. For such that the Open Door principle had been clearly applicable and had suited British interests. But now foreign countries were interested in acquiring concessions from the Chinese government for railway construction and mining enterprises. Here, the Open Door principle did not really seem applicable. Such concessions were too important, strategically and politically, for anyone to expect that the Chinese government should be guided only by commercial considerations in granting them. The Chinese government was practically forced to decide in which areas of China it wanted one power to build railways and in which areas another. And there was a good deal to be said for keeping the powers somewhat apart geographically in their concession activities, not all milling around together. If the British wanted to get in on the concession business, which they did, it was almost essential that they stake out a sphere where their concessions would be concentrated and the concessionaires of other powers excluded. So there was a deeper logic and necessity behind the growth of these so-called spheres of influence thin merely the wickedness of the powers themselves. The Open Door doctrines doctrine so old that it was referred to in the British Parliament in 1898 as "that famous phrase that has been quoted and requoted almost ad nauseam"3 - was simply not fully relevant to the new situation. However, the British government thought it still useful to talk about the Open Door and press publicly for its acknowledgment, because trade in consumption goods was still importantly involved, as well as concessions; they did not want to see British merchants excluded anywhere; and, if the principle of commercial "openness" were to be generally respected, this might act as a certain restraint on the expansion of the strategic and political influence of the other powers. It was against this background that the British government, in March, 1898 (about a month before the outbreak of the Spanish-American War), made its one and only formal approach to the United States government about the Open Door doctrine. It sent a secret communication to President McKinley, pointing out the danger that other powers might annex portions of Chinese territory or lease them under conditions which would assure themselves preferential treatment, and asking "whether they could count on the cooperation of the United States in opposing any such action by Foreign Powers and whether the United States would be prepared to join with Great Britain in opposing such measures should the contingency arise."4 Please note that they did not come out against spheres of influence. They came out only against annexations or leases of territory under conditions that would exclude the trade of other nations. There is no evidence that the British Foreign Office attached much importance to this approach or had much hope for its success. The British diplomats were more interested in other overtures they were making about the same time - to Japan and Germany. The approach to us had apparently been pressed upon them by the Colonial Minister, Joseph Chamberlain. Chamberlain, who had an American wife, had high hopes for Anglo-American political cooperation. He was powerful in domestic politics and took a prominent part in the conduct of foreign policy. I suspect that he had been needling the Foreign Office about enlisting American cooperation in China and that the Foreign Office sent the note to our government largely to satisfy him, perhaps even to demonstrate that there was nothing in the idea; but that is only a conjecture. In any case, nothing came of it at the time. Washington was preoccupied with the Cuban problem. The Department of State did not even have a Far Eastern Division in those days. The Secretary of State, old John Sherman, was inactive, somewhat senile, and about to give over his job. Washington said, in effect, "Nothing doing"; and the matter was not again raised in any formal way by the British government. As I say, one cannot be sure that the British Foreign Office was particularly disappointed with this answer. But there was one man who was, He wits John Hay, our ambassador to London. He was absent from London when the approach was inside, traveling in Egypt with his friend Henry Adams. When he returned and heard what had happened, he sat down and wrote to the Secretary of State asking for a reconsideration of our decision, only to be told that the time was still inopportune. Hay was presumably interested in the matter exclusively from the standpoint of our relations with England. He knew little if anything about China; lie had never been there. But he thought that we were unwise not to be sympathetic to the British in a situation where we might help them and perhaps thereby build up a sort of diplomatic credit on which we could draw later. In late summer of that year Hay was appointed Secretary of State. Unquestionably, when he came home to assume his duties, he had this matter on his mind. Some of the British had continued to talk to him about it from time to time during the summer, particularly Chamberlain. But, actually, British policy itself was beginning to move quietly away from the Open Door doctrine and continued to do so through the winter of 1898-99. The British statesmen still did lip service to the Open Door principle; but, recognizing that spheres of influence were not to be done away with so easily or to be spurned from the standpoint of their own interests, they proceeded quietly to take certain precautionary measures of their own. To balance the Russian position at Port Arthur, they leased a strategic port on the other side of the Gulf of Pechili. They went into the railway concession business in a big way, particularly in the Yangtze Valley. And they did one more thing which is particularly worth noting in connection with this subject we are discussing today. That was the leasing of Kowloon. As you will remember, they already had the island of Hongkong as a Crown colony. From there they did business with the mainland of China. I fear that a certain amount of that business may have been irregular in the sense that it evaded payment of the Chinese customs duties; in other words, it was smuggling. Now the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service was at that time an international service administered with great vigor, honesty, and efficiency by an Englishman, Sir Robert Hart. Hart's integrity was such that lie did not hesitate to step on the British merchants in China as hard as on anyone else who came into conflict with the customs regulations. Under his uncompromising and rigorous administration the Customs Service, which had acquired some revenue cutters, encircled Hongkong and kept movement between the island and the mainland under strict observation. It was apparently partly as a counter to this that the British, in June, 1898, acquired a lease on a portion of the Chinese mainland across the strait from Hongkong - the piece of territory known as Kowloon. With Kowloon in their possession it would be possible for goods to pass from Hongkong to the mainland without customs supervision. And it is significant that one of their first acts after acquiring the territory was to close the customhouse of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. This was naturally a source of concern to Sir Robert Hart and the Customs Service. With the Germans and the Russians, they had thus far had no trouble. The Germans had even invited them to set up a customhouse in their port of Kiaochow, where there had not been one before. But Hart was very apprehensive about what the Russians might do in the future. If the British were going to set this sort of a precedent, by expelling the Customs Service from Kowloon, and if the precedent were followed by others, then the establishment of the spheres of influence might conceivably lead to the closing of customhouses everywhere in the so-called spheres of influence, to the complete breakup of the Customs Service itself, and to the financial ruin of the Chinese government. When John Hay took up his duties is Secretary of State in the late months of 1898, he had no adviser on Far Eastern affairs. He therefore brought back to Washington a friend of his, W. W. Rockhill. Rockhill was then minister to Greece. He had served in China before, but it was seven years since he had been there, and he was somewhat out of touch with conditions. Although we have no direct evidence of this fact, we may it least suppose that what Hay wanted him to do was to find some way of responding to the British request that wave help them in their China problem. Rockhill got back in the spring of 1899 but this not immediately able to recommend any action along this line. There is some evidence that the President was still averse to taking any such action. In his message to Congress, in December, 1898, he had spoken as though the problem were one which had largely solved itself. We are also justified in suspecting that Rockhill himself did not know just how to tackle the problem - what action to take. The British were not renewing their request about the Open Door; they showed very little interest in it, as a matter of fact. The British ambassador, following the good old custom of that day, went away to Newport for the summer and was not available for consultation. Actually, as we have seen, the British government was slipping rapidly away from the Open Door Policy in their actions in China and probably had no desire at that time to be reminded of it. Then events began to happen. In the middle of June there arrived in the Washington area an old friend of Rockhill's from Peking: an Englishman by the name of Hippisley, who was second in command of the Chinese Customs Service, under Sir Robert Hart. Hippisley was on leave of absence from his post in China and was passing through the United States on his way to England. His wife was a Baltimore girl and a friend of Mrs. Rockhill. Presumably still smarting under the effect of the British action at Kowloon, and imbued with the necessity of preserving the authority of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service over the importation of goods into China, he urged that the American government "do what it can to maintain the Open Door for ordinary commerce in China."5 Spheres of interest, he said, were there to stay and had to be treated as existing facts. So long as they were taken to apply only to railroad and mining concessions, it was all right. But if people began to extend this concept to customs treatment, dangers would arise. With this in view he urged that the United States approach the other European powers and get from each of them an assurance that they would not interfere with treaty ports in their spheres of influence (that is, with ports where the Imperial Maritime Customs Service had its establishments) and that the Chinese treaty tariff should apply without discrimination to all merchandise entering their respective spheres of influence. Rockhill was taken with these ideas. But at first he thought they were unfeasible from the domestic political standpoint. So did Hay, who was then on vacation in New Hampshire but who remained in correspondence with Rockhill about the matter. "I am fully awake to the great importance of what you say," Hay wrote to Rockhill on August 7, "and am more than ready to act. But the senseless prejudices in certain sections of the 'Senate and people' compel us to move with great caution." Shortly after this, however, things suddenly changed. For one reason or another the domestic political inhibitions to taking action seem to have been overcome. On August 24, Hay gave Rockhill authorization to go ahead with Hippisley's suggestion. Basing his position largely on a memorandum drafted by Hippisley, Rockhill drew up a paper which was presented to the President and approved by him. On the basis of this paper, in turn, a series of notes were drawn up, addressed to the various powers which had interests in China. Hay came down from New Hampshire long enough to sign the notes; they were duly dispatched; Hay returned to his vacation in New Hampshire; and the summer doldrums once more settled over Washington. The notes began with a discussion of tile background. This discussion embodied some of Hippisley's thoughts but also included some of Rockhill's own ideas. It contained a refusal by the United States government to recognize the spheres of influence at all, whereas Hippisley had said they were there to stay and that there was no use challenging them. But the kernel of the notes lay in a concrete three-point formula, quite technical in wording, which was taken almost verbatim from Hippisley's memorandum. There is no evidence that this formula was given any serious critical study in the United States government or that any effort was made to assess the practical significance it would have when measured against events in China. It seems to me likely, in view of its origin and wording, that it was a carefully prepared summary of the desires of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service at that particular moment. It also seems likely that it was really aimed largely at the British.6 By getting our government to sponsor it, Hippisley had obviously found a convenient roundabout way of putting pressure on the British government to believe in a manner less threatening to the interests of tile Customs Service in China. But there is no indication that either Rockhill or John Hay was aware of this aspect of tile matter or had any idea of the extent to which Hippisley's formula might be in conflict with British policy at that particular moment. That they suspected the British of side stepping a bit from the straight-and-narrow path of the Open Door seems probable. I would doubt, however, that they understood how far this deviation had gone and how little agreeable to the British would be the formula contained in the notes. The reception given to the notes by the various governments was tepid, to say the least. The British failed to register enthusiasm, bickered for a long time about the application of the formula to Kowloon, and finally gave a conditional assent - that is, they would subscribe to our principles to the extent that everybody else might subscribe to them. Since everybody else made the same condition, the replies were no stronger than their weakest link. The weakest link was obviously Russia. The language of the Russian reply was cryptic and evasive. Our ambassador at St. Petersburg warned Hay that the Russian government "did not wish to answer your propositions at all. It did so finally with great reluctance."7 Despite this warning - so reminiscent of many warnings which were later to be given by the American Embassy in Moscow against placing too much faith in verbal assurances worried out of the Soviet government - Hay did not hesitate to announce, on March 20, 1900, that he bid received satisfactory assurances from all the powers and that he regarded them as "final and definitive."8 He thereby gave the impression, which the American public was not slow to accept, that the European powers, who had been on the verge of getting away with something improper in China, had been checked and frustrated by the timely intervention of the United States government and that a resounding diplomatic triumph had been achieved. In doing this, incidentally, he created a precedent which was destined to bedevil American diplomatic practice for at least a half-century thereafter and may - as far is I can see - continue to bedevil it for another half-century still. We shall see in the next of these lectures something of the nature and significance of this precedent. This was not all that there was to the story of the Open Door notes. There was an epilogue. Hay's announcement that he had received satisfactory assurances from the foreign powers about the Open Door principle happened to coincide almost exactly with the beginning of the Boxer Rebellion. This was, as you will recall, a violent and fanatical antiforeign movement, in part connived at by the Chinese government, which led to much destruction of foreign property, to the killing of a number of foreigners, to the flight of thousands more from the interior, and to a full-fledged military attack on the foreign legations in Peking, who were surrounded and besieged and forced to defend themselves with arms over a period of several weeks, until relieving expeditions reached the city. It was a presidential election year in the United States. The siege of the legations in Peking began on June 20 and ended on August 14. The Republican National Convention met in Philadelphia on June 19 and the Democratic Convention in Kansas City on July 4. Their was already ringing with controversies about "imperialism," which grew out of the decisions surrounding the Spanish-American War. The administration felt no desire to be drawn any more deeply than necessary into military ventures in China or to be harassed that summer by any further explosive issues of foreign policy. On July 3, one day before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, Hay issued to the powers another circular, this time defining - in what were apparently intended to be soothing and noncontroversial terms - American policy toward China in the light of the existing disorder and anarchy in that country. In the first Open Door notes he had mentioned the desirability of maintaining the integrity of China but had not stressed this point. Now, in the circular of July 3, 1900, it was specifically stated that "the policy of the Government of the United States is to seek . . . to preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity."9 This reference to the territorial and administrative "entity" of China has been taken by historians as adding a new note to the thoughts put forward in the original Open Door communications and as committing this government to the protection of China against foreign encroachments on her territory. That was indeed to be the interpretation put upon it and followed by the United States government for most of the next fifty years. The Open Door notes are thus generally considered to have been those addressed to the powers in the summer of 1899 plus the circular issued during the Boxer Rebellion in the following summer. Actually, none of these communications had any perceptible practical effect. The later circular, in fact, was scarcely noticed at all outside our own country. There was little reason to expect that things would be otherwise. The Boxer Rebellion, accompanied as it was by foreign military intervention, was bound to lead to a not increase, rather than decrease, in the authority exerted by foreign governments in China. The Russians used it to strengthen their hold on Manchuria. And the indemnities levied against the Chinese government forced the latter to increase its borrowings from one or the other of the powers, and hence its dependence on them. The authors of the American Open Door policy soon became themselves quite disillusioned with it. It seemed to be almost swallowed up in the march of events. To Hippisley, the Boxer Rebellion meant the inevitable breakup of China, which in turn meant the end of the Open Door. Rockhill, who was sent out to Peking as a special United States commissioner to help reorganize Chinese affairs after the rebellion, is said to have written, only two years after the first Open Door notes were sent: "I trust it may be a long time before the United States gets into another muddle of this description."10 As for Hay himself, in December, 1900, only five months after his proclamation of devotion to the principle of upholding Chinese territorial and administrative "entity," he secretly instructed our minister in Peking to try to obtain for the United States a naval coaling station at Samsah Bay in the Chinese province of Fukien.11 But when, a few weeks later, the Japanese, alarmed by the increasing pace of Russian encroachment in Manchuria, inquired politely whether the United States would be inclined to join them in using force to assure the observance of the principles it had enunciated, Hay replied that the United States was "not at present prepared to attempt singly, or in concert with other Powers, to enforce these views in the cast by any demonstration which could present a character of hostility to any other Power."12 There is every reason to believe that the Japanese took the most careful and attentive note of the significance of this statement. They were interested then, as always, in real military allies, not half-hearted ones. One year later they signed the Anglo-Japanese alliance on which their security was to be based for many years to come. Three years later they took up arms and threw the Russians out of the south of Manchuria. In doing these things, they neither expected our aid nor feared our opposition. Had not Hay said that our views about China were not ones which we would enforce by any demonstration which could present a character of hostility to any other power? These, then, were the circumstances surrounding the issuance of John Hay's Open Door notes. When you analyze them, what did they amount to? It seems to me that they amounted to something like this. In the summer of 1899 the American Secretary of State approached a number of other powers and asked them to subscribe to a certain formula designed to govern the policies of countries that had acquired spheres of influence in China. It was not a formula which Hay had drafted. There is no evidence that he understood fully its practical significance. One of his assistants had bought it sight unseen, so to speak, from an Englishman who had happened to be in the vicinity of Washington that summer. It was probably thought to be responsive to a request the British had made of us. Actually, it did not represent English policy of the moment; it was even somewhat in conflict with that policy. It may have represented the aspirations of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service in the face of certain developments which threatened its future. It was not a new policy but an old one. It was not an American policy but one long established in British relations with China. It was not a policy that in general had a future; it was an antiquated one, already partially overtaken by developments. It was not a policy that we Americans cared enough about to support in any determined way or for the results of which, if implemented, we were prepared to accept any particular responsibility. Finally, as events were shortly to show, it was not even a policy to which we ourselves would be inclined to adhere in our own possessions, for within a few years after our acquisition of the Philippines and Puerto Rico - and despite our brave promises to the contrary - we set tip discriminatory regimes, conflicting with the Open Door principle, in both of these newly acquired territories. There is no evidence that Hay was aware of these realities, in so far as they were the realities of the moment, or was capable of foreseeing them, in so far as they pertained to the future. There is perhaps no reason to suppose that lie should have. The formula had a high-minded and idealistic ring; it would sound well at home; it was obviously in the interests of American trade; the British had been known to advocate it - still did, so far as he knew - and it was hard to see what harm could come from trying it on the other powers. This he did. He got the grudging, embarrassed, and evasive replies which might have been expected. He was warned of the lack of substance in these replies, but he saw no reason why he should not turn to the American public and make the best of it by representing these answers as a diplomatic success. For all this, I do not blame him and do not mean to censure him. He was a man of his time - a man of dignity and sensitivity - a great American gentleman. He labored in a framework of government which was unsuited, really, to the conduct of the foreign affairs of a great power. He was making the best of an unsatisfactory situation. But what I do want to stress, and this is the central point of this discussion, is that the American public found no difficulty in accepting this action as a major diplomatic achievement. Its imagination was fired, its admiration won. Hay was established in its affections as a great statesman. The popularity of the administration's foreign policy was materially improved just at the time of the coming presidential elections. Not only was this effect achieved it the moment, but a myth was established which was destined to flourish in American thinking for at least a half-century. Neither the obvious lack of practical results, nor the disillusionment of Hay and the other persons involved, nor our unwillingness to bolster the policy in any forceful way, nor our subsequent departure from it ourselves - none of these things succeeded in shaking in any way the established opinion of the American public that here, in this episode of the Open Door notes, a tremendous blow had been struck for the triumph of American principles in international society - in American blow for an American idea. FOOTNOTES 1. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The Turn of the Century (New York, 1926), p. 509. 2. British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (London, 1927), I, 28. 3. Parliamentary Debates (4th ser., 1898), LXIV, 827 (August 10: remarks of Balfour). 4. Cited in Alfred Vagts, Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten in der Weltpolitik (New York, 1935), II, 1029. Vagts gives the State Department archives as the source 5. The correspondence among Hay, Rockhill, and Hippisley on this subject is cited extensively in A. Whitney Grisswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York, 1938), chap II; all references to this correspondence are taken from that source. 6. The first of the three articles had primary relevance to the British sphere of influence, in which the great bulk of the establishment of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service was situated. 7. Cited in Tyler Denett, John Hay (New York, 1934), p. 294. 8. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1899 (Washington, 1901), p. 142. 9. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1900 (Washington, 1903), p. 299. 10. Griswold, op. cit., p. 83. 11. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915 (Washington, 1924) pp. 113-14. 12. State Department memorandum of February 1, 1901, cited by Alfred L. P. Dennis in Adventures in American Diplomacy (New York, 1928), p. 242.