Gunboat Justice Volume 1

An abridged version of the trilogy has been published as Justice by Gunboat.
Volume 1 of Gunboat Justice covers the 19th Century from 1842 to 1900.

The signing of unequal treaties in the 1840s with China and in the 1850s with Japan, both at the point of British and American gunboat barrels, brought Europeans and Americans to live in both countries. The local legal systems were considered barbaric and the foreign powers extracted concessions that foreigners would be subject only to their own laws in both civil and criminal matters.

Throughout out the 19th Century, China and Japan both faced challenges from the Western powers. China was the big loser – Japan was the big winner. The Manchu-run Qing Dynasty refused to reform and China fought and lost numerous wars with foreigners resulting in its sovereignty further and further chipped away by more and more unequal treaties. In Japan, on the other hand, the arrival of foreigners triggered a civil war which was won by the reformers. The Japanese, led by Hirobumi Ito, embarked on a program of economic, political, military and legal reform that led to Japan becoming a world power.

Initially, after the opening of the treaty ports, Britain and America established consular courts to try cases involving their nationals. These were staffed by consular officers, usually untrained in the law. Justice was often rough and tumble in these courts – a situation that continued for Americans throughout the 19th Century. In the Ross case, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of trials without juries in consular courts.

The British on the other hand sought to remedy some of the weaknesses of the consular court system. In 1865, the British Supreme Court for China and Japan was established in Shanghai and 14 years later, the British Court for Japan was established in Yokohama. The larger-than-life Sir Edmund Hornby was appointed the first Chief Judge of the British Supreme Court with a genius, Egyptologist Charles Goodwin, as his Assistant Judge. Hornby presided over a number of major cases such as the Wills case where he ruled that the Shanghai Municipal Council had the power to charge rates, and that trials before a jury of five rather than 12 as was required in England was legal. In the Kwangtung case Hornby, much to the consternation of other treaty powers, ruled that mixed trials with Chinese officials and British consular officers were legal. This decision had to be overturned by a later treaty, the Chefoo Convention, signed between British Minister Sir Thomas Wade and Chinese statesman, Li Hongzhang.

The judges who followed Hornby and Goodwin were largely appointed from barristers and consular officers who had come to the Far East to establish their careers. The consular officers all learnt Chinese or Japanese to a professional level and dealt with local officials in the local language. One consul, Frederick Bourne, was almost killed by a Chinese mob and had to live for nine months as a Chinese with the local Mandarin to avoid further attacks. One other consular officer, Hiram Shaw Wilkinson, rose all the way through the ranks becoming Crown Advocate in Shanghai, Judge for Japan and finally Chief Justice in Shanghai. His son Hiram Parkes “Harrie” Wilkinson succeeded him as Crown Advocate creating a 44-year family dynasty in that office. One barrister, Nicholas Hannen, rose to become concurrently both Chief Justice of the Court and Consul-General in Shanghai when, against much local opposition, the positions were amalgamated for 7 years.

One of the greatest challenges to the power of the courts came from the British-run Imperial Maritime Customs – in a number of cases, Customs, on the specific instructions of its Scottish Inspector-General, Robert Hart, challenged the courts’ authority over customs officials as servants of the Chinese Emperor. Chief Justice George French and Assistant Judge Robert Mowat firmly repelled these efforts. In Japan, a prosecution by Japanese Customs almost brought down whole British legal system there when a decision of HS Wilkinson (at the time acting Law Secretary), that importing opium into Japan was legal angered the Japanese so much they threatened an appeal to the Privy Council challenging the court’s powers. This led directly the establishment of the British Court for Japan with Shanghai barrister Richard Rennie appointed as the new judge. Rennie later became Chief Justice in Shanghai.

Later, Japan saw three high profile murder cases: the first, where the enraged Lieutenant J.H. Hetherington of the US Navy killed his wife’s lover, Briton Gower Robinson; the second, where the adulterous Edith Carew poisoned her equally unfaithful husband, Walter; and the third, the trial and execution by the Japanese of American Robert Miller for slaying three people in the ironically-named Rising Sun bar on the very day American extraterritoriality ended in Japan.

In 1894, Japan reached agreements with the Western powers to abolish extraterritoriality before the end of the century. In 1895, Japan defeated China in a war and, in a treaty negotiated between Hirobumi Ito and Li Hongzhang, itself imposed extraterritoriality on China.

The 19th Century ended with a newly powerful Japan preparing to assert itself against foreigners and China.

An abridged version of the trilogy has been published as Justice by Gunboat.