File No. 24074/22.
The department’s attention is respectfully called to the clipping from
the North China Daily News of May 13, 1910, entitled “Analysis of the
Riots,” from which it would appear that the outbreak changed in
character after the first day’s rioting. It was first the outbreak of a
hungry mob, which subsequently became an organized attack upon foreign
property.
[Inclosure.]
[North China Daily News, May 5,
1910—Changsha (Hupeh)—From our
own correspondent.]
analysis of the riots.
A few days’ residence in the city has enabled one to take stock and
think out some of the causes that have been at work to produce the
havoc that is visible, dotted about in every quarter of the city and
in every suburb but one (the east). There is much to learn from the
various buildings that have not been destroyed, as well as from the
different kinds of destruction which have been dealt out to
different classes of building. Three kinds of distinction can now be
clearly made. First, the difference between the looting that
occurred on the first night of the riot and that of the two
following days and nights; second, the difference between the
treatment of property that foreigners had rented and that which they
had purchased; third, the difference between the treatment of
foreign-style property in which the Changsha gentry had monetary
interest and that in which they had none.
One compound only is left with the mark of merely the Wednesday night
riot. Everything else that has been destroyed has either been
revisited or was visited for the first time on the Thursday or
Friday. The Wesleyan Methodist Mission in the Hai-ch’ang Kai (Long
West Street) was perhaps the very first mission to be attacked. The
mob after passing the mission and insisting on its doors being
opened had tasted the pleasure of hearing glass break and doors
smash at the Imperial Bank a few doors away. Then, having forced
open the doors, they made no attempt to touch the treasure (which
was very large), but just returned to the mission and enjoyed
themselves for an hour or two.
If that mission alone had been attacked the mob might have earned all
the epithets for destructiveness that the English language
possesses. They acquitted themselves in a way that would earn the
commendation of their teachers and masters in the art of rioting,
whoever these might be. But now, when the compound is compared with
all the other looted places, the unfortunate missionaries get no
commiseration whatever. They are laughingly told to realize how well
off they are. The bookcases show the marks of fire and hatchet, but
the books are left with a mere shaking. The
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desks were smashed up and burnt, but the
private and mission check books, ledgers, etc., which were in them
are all safe and sound. Pictures and ornaments, doors and windows,
and most of the chairs were thrown on the bonfire which the mob
began to make in one of the rooms, but which for the sake of their
companions in the upper story they transferred bodily, on the carpet
on which it had been kindled, to the lawn in front. But the fabric
of the house as a whole is uninjured. So with the chapel; the lamps
and all the windows, most of the benches, and all the ornamental
texts are done for, but the building will be ready for use again as
soon as the new woodwork is painted.
In all other looted missions there is practically nothing left to
mend. Not only were the backs of books broken, the pages were torn
up one by one. In most cases the fragments of the buildings that
remain must be pulled down—and this even when they have not been
fired.
In other words, on Wednesday night there was a hungry mob that had a
grievance and had no recognized leader. On Thursday there were
leaders and the program was distinctly marked out beforehand. The
stores of oil at the Standard and Asiatic oil companies’ warehouses
were not burnt in situ; they were taken with proper precautions, and
were used with deliberate effect in the 16 different fires that were
kindled in as many different sites in or around the city.
Next, there was a distinction made between property that had been
rented and property that had been purchased by foreigners. To
understand this distinction it is necessary to recall a few of the
events of the past few years. It is doubtful whether a single case
of land purchase by missionaries or merchants has been put through
during those years without some amount of friction. The provincial
assembly has gone to the extreme of officially advertising in the
daily press a warning to land or house holders not to sell to
foreigners. They even particularized the neighborhood in which the
officials propose to make the settlement as being one in which there
was to be no such sales. The Changsha hsi en has been using a
special book for indorsing ordinary deeds of sale between Chinese
and Chinese, which states that if the land mentioned in the deed be
hereafter sold to foreign merchants or missionaries the deed thereby
becomes null and the land ipso facto reverts to the previous owner.
There are eight pieces of property in the occupation of foreigners
that have escaped the riot. Seven out of the eight are rented
places.
Only one is the purchased property of the mission occupying it. The
street in which that building stands was well posted with a rhyming
announcement to pacify the rioters.
