Wright, Leigh, Julian Pauncefote and British Imperial Policy 1855-1889.

Wright, Leigh, Julian Pauncefote and British Imperial Policy 1855-1889. University Press of America, Inc.; Lanham, Maryland; New York: Oxford, 2002; ISBN 0-7618-2202-X; paperback; xvi + 141pp; index.

The Right Honourable Sir Julian Pauncefote (1828-1902), created Lord Pauncefote of Preston in 1899, was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom to the United States of America from 1889 until 1893, being upgraded to Ambassador there from 1893 until his death in 1902. He will be better known to readers of this journal, however, for his role in the chartering of the British North Borneo Company in 1881, a subject covered in chapter four (pp. 69-101) of the volume under review.

Pauncefote was born in Munich in 1828. He hailed from a Gloucestershire gentry family, wealthy but somewhat outside the social elite. A younger son, he had to make his own way in the world. His education was at Marlborough (rather than Eton or Harrow) and, instead of proceeding to Oxbridge, he was called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1852. A conveyancing barrister for the next ten years, he was also private secretary for a few months in 1855 to Sir William Molesworth (1810-1855), Secretary of State for the Colonies. This appointment terminated because of Molesworth's untimely death.

Pauncefote married on 14 September 1859 and was blessed with five children, one of whom died in infancy. Crippling financial losses caused him to look to the colonies. He began practice as a barrister in prosperous Hong Kong in 1862. Rapidly recovering financially, he became acting Attorney-General of the colony in 1865 and was appointed to the substantive office in the following year. His achievements there included the systematizing of the statutes in his preparation of the Hong Kong Code of Civil Procedure (p. 10). He also drafted the ordinance for the establishment of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (1865). Throughout his official career Pauncefote continued in lucrative private practice as a barrister. He was generally well liked and built up a network of contacts which facilitated his subsequent Whitehall career. Already knighted, Pauncefote departed from Hong Kong in late 1873 and for a few months in 1874 he was Chief Justice of the Leeward Islands in the West Indies. That post, however, was too insignificant for a man of his talents. He was brought back to London as Legal Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office. In 1876 he transferred to the more prestigious Foreign Office at the same level, being promoted Permanent Under-Secretary in 1882.

Besides his expertise in international law and his influential contacts, Pauncefote "represented the new professionals who were innovative and imaginative, and willing to try new and even unorthodox ways based on reason and experiment, and not necessarily on traditional practices" (p. 15). His Whitehall career lasted fifteen years followed by thirteen years in Washington. He became the Foreign Office's recognized "China hand" (pp. 28, 60) and played a key role in the Chefoo negotiations (pp. 103-126). This "decade-long issue" arose out of the 1875 murder of Augustus Margary, a young British consular officer who had been killed at Manwyne (Burma) by Chinese and Kachin tribesmen (p. 108).

When a Foreign Secretary was "weak" and/or the Prime Minister of the day took little interest in foreign affairs, officials such as Pauncefote could exercise a strong influence on policy; when the Foreign Secretary was strong, on the other hand, there was less scope for official action. Lords Derby (1874-1878) and Granville (1880-1885) were examples of weak foreign secretaries during the relevant era. Lord Salisbury (1878-1880, 1887-1892, 1895-1902), by contrast, exercised a much stricter oversight: his relationship with Pauncefote was strictly that of superior and subordinate (p. 33).

There are no "Pauncefote papers" in existence. Having no diaries or private correspondence to mine, the author is necessarily unable to draw a picture from the inside. Hence this concise monograph cannot be a biography as such; instead the author uses the records of the Colonial and Foreign Offices in London to work out Pauncefote's influence on British imperial policy between 1855 and 1889. The Washington period is deliberately relegated to an epilogue here by Dr. Wright because the topic has already been covered in a 1929 volume by Professor R. B. Mowat.

The main strengths of Julian Pauncefote and British Imperial Policy are the author's knowledge of the British and colonial historical background plus his grasp of the internal workings of Whitehall. In the chapter endnotes there are helpful potted biographies of the dramatis personae; and the author is particularly good on the aristocratic family interconnections. The characterization of cabinet infighting during the second Gladstone ministry (1880-1885) is excellent. Overall, the monograph is well-balanced, fair, lacking in bias.

Dr. Wright (b. 1925), already well-known to readers of this journal for a long sequence of monographs and articles about Sarawak and North Borneo, particularly The Origins of British Borneo (1970), is currently Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Publication of his latest book happened to coincide with the centenary of Pauncefote's death although there is no explicit indication that this was intentional. Whether it was or not, the author undoubtedly provides an insight into a principal designer of British foreign policy, particularly during the shambolic second Gladstone ministry.