He was proud, but kind-hearted; he was low-key, but admired by all.
As an Englishman, he was proud of the qing officialdom, and the official was to a pin, and at the same time, he was soft on the British medal title.
Is he a messenger of advanced civilizations or a spokesman for the great powers? Opinions vary.
But what is certain is that everyone is calling him "Governor of the Great Qing" behind his back.
Robert Hurd, an Englishman who stood for half a century in the late Qing dynasty officialdom where the great powers looked around and the Han feudal officials rose.
He served as the chief of the General Taxation Department of the Great Qing Customs for 48 years, was a member of the Zhengyipin Of the Qing Empire, posthumously awarded the Title of Prince Taibao, and was also a baron in the British Empire, a knighthood of the Grand Cross.
Based on the General Department of Customs and Taxation, he intervened in various fields such as finance, military, diplomacy, foreign affairs, and postal services of the Qing Dynasty, and could be called a shadow governor.
In the eyes of some people, he was a messenger of civilization that helped China move toward modernization and an international friend who helped the Qing Dynasty fight against the great powers.
In the eyes of others, Hurd used customs as a tool to help the great powers divide China and was the spokesman of imperialism.
Why was Hurd able to gain the trust of a large number of Manchu Qing magnates, including Cixi, and how powerful was he?
How should we evaluate such a person? Let's talk about the most authentic Hurd in my eyes.
Hurd's career
Compared with Mr. Hurd's future glory, his starting point is not high.
In 1835, four years before Lin Zexu's Humen cigarette sales, the British Empire was doing everything possible to pry open the door of the Chinese market.
In this year Robert Hurd was born in Northern Ireland, England, a small merchant family, the family is not very good, then can only work hard.
At the age of 15, he was admitted to the then-fledged Queen's University of Belfast, and then he was a scholarship recipient every year.
On his terms, staying in England after graduation or going to colonies such as India can have a bright future, but Hurd has always been interested in the mysterious Eastern Empire.
As early as his junior year, he almost dropped out of school and went to Daqing to become a missionary, but he did not really go because he was reluctant to have a diploma.
On the eve of his graduation, the British Foreign Office just wanted to recruit a group of fresh graduates to be sent to the Qing Dynasty, so he immediately submitted his application.
Theoretically, this good job required exams, but Hurd was given a no-exam because the school's letter of recommendation was full of praise.
In 1854 Hurd left England for the Qing Dynasty, where he worked for 5 years in the diplomatic service.
While actively and brilliantly completing his own work, he also vigorously studied traditional Chinese culture in his spare time, and had a certain degree of research on the Four Books and Five Classics, which won the praise of the leaders of China and britain.
In 1859, due to the influence of the Hongbing Uprising, smuggling was rampant along the coast of Guangdong, and the tariff revenue of Guangzhou Guangdong Customs had plummeted from more than 400,000 taels in the past to about 180,000 taels.
The then Governor of Liangguang approached Hurd, hoping that the 24-year-old Briton would help them build a new customs office.
Obviously, in the eyes of many officials in the Qing Dynasty at that time, foreigners were all-powerful.
But Hurd, knowing exactly how many pounds he had, declined the governor's advice and wrote a letter to Li Thai, who was preparing a new customs office in Shanghai at the time.
Li Tai was the first director of the General Department of Customs and Taxation of the Qing Dynasty.
Around 1854, the Qing Dynasty experienced the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Shanghai Knife Society Uprising, and Britain and France and other powers sent troops to help the Qing suppress the uprising, and in return, they gained control of shanghai customs.
As the most powerful capitalist empire in the world at that time, the British Empire naturally obtained the position of the first General Customs and Taxation Department.
At the invitation of Li Thai, Hurd abandoned the iron rice bowl that the British consul envied by everyone and went to the sea to enter the Chinese customs.
The imperialist mentality of Li Thai was too heavy and despised the Qing court too much, which caused dissatisfaction in the Qing government, and the Qing court decided that Hurd and his colleagues would temporarily take over the post of General Taxation Department.
In June of that year, Hurd arrived in Beijing to meet Prince Gong, and he was familiar with Chinese culture, and he quickly captured Prince Gong's heart, so that the only thing that hindered Hurd's progress was Li Thai, the legitimate General Taxation Department.
In the process of suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Li Hongzhang himself saw how good the foreign gun brigade was, so he proposed to buy more foreign guns and cannons to strengthen the combat effectiveness of the Qing army.
Hurd listened, this is a good deal, earning some arms costs is a small matter, the key is to give Britain a chance to control the Qing army.
So he quickly drafted a plan on what equipment to buy, where to buy it, how much money it would cost, where to get it, and even several price points to choose from.
Immediately after the plan was approved, Hurd wrote to his boss, who was "recuperating" in Britain, asking him to come forward to purchase warships.
When Li Thai received the letter, he was immediately cured.
He had long fantasized about becoming the governor of China, determined to take control of the fleet.
Without permission, Li Thai signed a contract with British Navy Colonel Aspen, who had participated in the Opium War, in the name of the Qing government.
It was stipulated that Aspen was the leader of the fleet and obeyed the orders of the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, but this order could only be conveyed by Li Thai, and if there was a problem with the emperor's order, Li Thai had the right to refuse to convey it.
This contract made the Qing government furious, but it did not have the ability to cut off Li Thai's head, so it had to pay an extra severance payment, dismiss the Asben fleet, and then dismiss Li Thai.
On November 30, 1963, Hurd took his place on the day Lee Thai got out.
The 29-year-old Hurd didn't brag that the head of customs did allow him to get more, even more than he could have imagined.
It affects the finances and affects the Beiyang Fleet
Compared with his predecessors, Hurd had great "respect" for the Qing Dynasty, and after these positions in the General Taxation Department, he repeatedly issued documents emphasizing that the customs employees were employees of the Qing government.
We must not have a sense of superiority, but must be the brothers of Chinese officials and the compatriots of the Chinese people.
But at the same time, he also repeatedly emphasized that customs officials were subordinate to the customs supervision of the Qing Dynasty.
But you must do your best to improve your business capabilities and then influence the decisions of Qing officials, and make yourself the actual decision-maker hidden behind the scenes.
After the Taiping Rebellion, the power of the Qing court gradually shifted to the hands of local governors, and the main contradiction of the Qing court became the contradiction between the growing demand for reparations and borrowing and the backward fiscal revenue of the agricultural country.
And at this time, Hurd came, with his customs and generous customs duties.
Thanks to the efforts of him and the warships of the great powers, more and more ports were opened in the Qing Dynasty, the number of customs also increased, and the amount of tax revenue continued to soar.
In the first year of Hurd's rise to power, the customs tax revenue of the Great Qing Dynasty was 7.94 million taels, and by the eve of Hurd's retirement in 1904, this figure had become 30.21 million taels.
Customs taxation has become the most important source of finance for the Central Committee of the Qing Dynasty, and Hurd has thus become the "Minister of Finance" in the true sense of the Qing Dynasty, and gradually intervened in other tax revenues including opium and even land endowments.
Mr. General Taxation's control over other sovereignty of the Qing Dynasty was also very successful.
Diplomatically, Hurd participated in the conclusion of more than 60 treaties of the Qing Dynasty to varying degrees.
Hurd, in the process of expanding his customs power, inevitably touched the interests of other powers, so he was happy to give them a little diplomatic benefit in exchange for their support.
During the Gengzi period, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the city of Beijing, and Empress Dowager Cixi ran away with the Guangxu Emperor, and then signed the Xinugu Treaty, which had the largest amount of indemnities in Chinese history.
Long before the treaty was signed, Hurd cleared the financial revenue and reparations capacity of the large sums, and then formulated a claim plan for the great powers, and the content of the formal treaty was almost exactly the same as the plan written by Hurd.
Japan invaded Taiwan in 1873.
The Qing Dynasty was stimulated and planned to buy a fleet, and under the active operation of Hurd, this errand fell into the hands of him and Li Hongzhang, and this fleet was the later Beiyang Fleet.
Hurd moved up and down, desperately trying to make the British the admiral of Beiyang, Li Hongzhang wanted to exert control of the Beiyang Marine Division, and Hurd's plan ultimately failed.
If you are not of my race, your heart will be different
Hurd actively promoted the modernization of the system of the Qing Empire, which can be regarded as half a century of heart for the cause of reform in the Qing Dynasty.
During this period, he did contribute money and helped Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong and others in many ways in the foreign affairs of others.
He single-handedly established the modern postal system in China and paid for the establishment of the Tongwenguan, so that the later Peking University did not die prematurely.
Therefore, HURD has been praised by many as a pioneer of China's modernization and a friend of the Chinese people.
Hurd and his customs did make an outstanding contribution to maintaining the Qing Dynasty, but Hurd did not care how much he contributed to the finances of the Qing Dynasty, regardless of foreign affairs.
Looking back on Hurd's life, he was indeed hard at work and bowed to exhaustion.
From The Sun in Great Britain to the Sun never sets until the Sun Goes Down.
The customs agency he set up claimed to be the most incorruptible organ in the Qing Dynasty and even in the world at that time, which may be true, but his efficient and clean customs was an organ that served Britain and other powers through and through.
The purpose of existence was to ensure that the great powers controlled imports and exports through unequal treaties, and to pay a little tariff for China to gradually become a colony, but also to give the Qing court the ability to suppress the peasant uprising.
Hurd's main means of maintaining the integrity of the customs is to pay high salaries, but the high salaries obtained by the Chinese people are not enjoyed by Chinese themselves.
Hurd's customs office only hired a small number of Chinese for low-level jobs out of courtesy, and the salaries they gave were very different from those of foreigners.
In the hearts of the Hittites, first of all, it must be his personal power, followed by the interests of the British Empire, and then the great powers that are qualified to divide China.
The main purpose of all his efforts in the Chinese foreign affairs movement was not to promote China's development, but to ensure that the Qing regime would not collapse.
After all, the British Empire was not capable of completely colonizing China as it did with India.
Maintaining a corrupt and incompetent regime like the Qing Dynasty can help Hurd to gain power for himself, and it can also better help Britain to claim China's wealth.
Hurd died in England on 20 September 1911.
Twenty days after his death, the Xinhai Revolution broke out and the Qing Dynasty collapsed, but the foreigner customs he left behind went through the Beiyang government and Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing government, and remained in a detached position until the establishment of New China.
At the age of 28, he became the General Tax Department, and for the next half century, he stood firm and fought left and right in the Qing Dynasty and the Western powers, and from this point of view, Hurd was indeed a skilled political figure.
But what he did, on any level, did not deserve any praise from his current Chinese.