# A wandering student in the Far East/The making of the North-East Frontier Part I.

PART III.
THE MAKING OF THE NORTH-EAST FRONTIER
"Frontiers are the razor's edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war or peace, of life or death to nations."
—Lord Curzon.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MAKING OF THE NORTH-EAST FRONTIER.
PART I.: GREAT BRITAIN AND CHINA.
"Frontiers are the razor's edge on which hang suspended the modern issues of war or peace, of life or death to nations;" and of all the frontiers which have claimed the attention of British statesmen, none are comparable in interest and importance to the land frontiers of the Indian empire. When the Indian frontier is spoken of, the mind inevitably flies to the tumbled labyrinth of mountains and valleys strewn for hundreds of miles along the wild and ​passionate Afghan borderland suggested by the well-worn phrase "the North-West Frontier." But there is another frontier, which may be termed "the North-East Frontier," which has received but a modest share of public attention, but which nevertheless can boast its tale of tragedies and comedies, and which has been responsible from time to time for no small amount of perturbation among diplomatists and even European Cabinets. It is of this frontier, stretching from the little-known highlands of eastern Tibet in the north to Siam and French Indo-China in the south, that I propose to speak; and since tragedies play so fine a part in the making of an empire's frontiers, let me begin with one of the pathetic tragedies of the North-East Frontier.
Monument to Augustus Raymond Margary.
​on the Burmese frontier, and anxiously scanning the country beyond for the first glimpse of Indian helmets approaching from the west. Then you can picture the meeting. China and India grasping hands, and awakening those primeval echoes with a British hurrah over the fait accompli."
The Momein pass was reached, beyond on the Burmese frontier the Indian helmets were found, the long solitary journey had been successfully accomplished. But with the advance of the Indian mission a sudden change came over the scene. The gallant traveller, who as an individual had met, with but few exceptions, with the greatest courtesy and the warmest hospitality, was treacherously and brutally murdered, and the mission itself forced to beat a precarious and undignified retreat to the land whence it had come. Thirty and more years have rolled by since the defeat of the ill-starred expedition, Upper Burma has since fallen into the lap of Great Britain, the ponderous wheels of the Chinese ​diplomatic machine have been set in motion from time to time with a view to determining boundaries between the now coterminous empires, but the engaging spectacle of India and China grasping hands can even now be only said to have been realised in a modified degree.
For more than a century the prospect of opening up communications between Burma and Western China has excited the attention not only of the British mercantile community resident in Rangoon,—naturally directly interested in such a project,—but of a far wider public in England itself; while the British Government, moved from time to time by the importunity of the associated chambers of commerce in England, India, and China, has made fitful and not altogether well-timed endeavours to further the various schemes proposed. Such trade as there was between Burma and China—amounting to £500,000 half a century ago—came to an abrupt termination with the outbreak of the Mohammedan rebellion in 1855, which trailed with fire and sword across the province of Yün-nan for a ​period of seventeen years; and it was this unwelcome cessation of trade which led to the despatch of an expedition, under Colonel Sladen, across the borderland into Yün-nan in 1868. The chief objects of this mission were laid down by General Fytche, Chief Commissioner of British Burma, to be "to discover the cause of the cessation of the trade formerly existing by these routes, the exact position held by the Kakhyens, Shans, and Panthays with reference to that traffic, and their disposition or otherwise to resuscitate it."
Such objects were, no doubt, perfectly legitimate; yet it is not difficult to conceive that a British mission, travelling into the heart of a disaffected Chinese province, would not be viewed with either satisfaction or equanimity by the Chinese; and though "care was especially taken to disown any political partisanship, and to proclaim to all that the object was to explore in the interests of commerce," the cordial welcome accorded to the party by the Mohammedan rebel in power ​at T'eng Yüeh, and the bond of friendship which sprang up between the Chinese Mohammedans and their co-religionists of the British escort, were unquestionably calculated to excite the suspicion and hostility of the Chinese Government. Certain arrangements for regulating trans-frontier trade were come to with the Mohammedan ruler of T'eng Yüeh, and the mission carried away with them "letters expressive of the desire of the Panthay Sultan's Government to enter into friendly relations with our Government, and to foster mutual trade."
The belief of the mission that a Mohammedan empire was about to be established in Western China was ill-founded, and its achievements, as far as practical results are concerned, were consequently of little value, while its friendly attitude towards the Mohammedan faction undoubtedly militated against the success of a second expedition, despatched under Colonel Brown during the opening days of 1875. Chinese suspicion, moreover, as to the projects of Great Britain as a Mohammedan Power, already aroused by the procedure of ​the Sladen Mission in 1868, had received confirmation in the interim in the shape of a convention contracted with another Mohammedan rebel, on another troublous frontier of the flowery kingdom, the Athalik Ghazi Khan, Yakub Beg, who was playing at empire on his own in the dim distance of Chinese Turkestan. And while it is claimed that the Peking Government had given their sanction to the expedition by signing the passports for both Margary and the party under Colonel Brown, they subsequently denied that they had been given to understand that the passports granted were for any purpose beyond that of mere travel. However this may be, the immediate result of the advance of the mission was, as has been seen, the cold-blooded murder of a gallant English gentleman and the precipitate retreat of the remainder of the party; the subsequent effect, the opening of the ports of Ichang, Wuhu, Wenchow, and Pakhoi to trade, and of a number of villages on the Yang-tsze as ports of call.
Hereafter a number of circumstances conspired to concentrate the attention of European ​Cabinets upon the rapidly growing problems of the troublous Sino-Burmese borderland. An ineradicable belief in the richness and immeasurable commercial potentialities of the south-western provinces of China still stirred the pulses and fired the imagination of the mercantile community when, on New Year's Day 1886, a large additional slice of territory fell like a ripe cherry into the mouth of Britain, shaken from the tree by the thinly-veiled political ambitions and aggressive machinations of the budding imperialism of France.
Out of this rearrangement of ancient territories sprang inevitable questions as to the definition of respective boundaries and rights. The bubble of Chinese greatness still awaited pricking at the hands of Japan, and the exasperating subserviency displayed by the British Foreign Office to Chinese susceptibilities was seized upon by the astute diplomatists of that country and speedily turned to good account. A demand was preferred ​to the British Government for the continuance of the despatch of a decennial mission of tribute, said to be due from Burma in recognition of her vassalage. The Burmans, however, stoutly denied the claims of China to suzerainty, and declared the arrangement to be a reciprocal one, by which each country had agreed to send complimentary presents to one another every ten years. Lord Salisbury had ​scarcely concluded an arrangement on these lines when the short-lived Cabinet of 1885—"the Cabinet of caretakers"—went out, and were replaced, early in February 1886, by a Ministry drawn from that party whose advent to power is always hailed with satisfaction and delight by all and sundry intent on knocking off corners of the empire, and extracting concessions from Great Britain abroad. Lord Rosebery, the new Foreign Minister, took the earliest opportunity of reversing the decision of his predecessor and agreeing to the despatch of presents from Burma only, "thereby unequivocally admitting China's claims to suzerainty, and gratuitously tendering a most abject submission to the Son of Heaven."
The proceedings which followed upon this decision provide a light and comic interlude in the usually ponderous annals of serious diplomacy. The Chinese envoy in London,
​the Marquis Tsêng, consented to waive the claim of his Government to a tribute mission in return for a readjustment of the frontier which, among other things, would place Bhamo on the Chinese side. Lord Rosebery, unbeknown to Marquis Tsêng, telegraphed to Mr O'Conor, the British Chargé d'Affaires, to ascertain the feeling in Peking. The Yamen, it was found, knew little and cared less about the Marquis's projects of frontier rearrangement, but did care a great deal about the requisition before them for passports for a mission under Mr Macauley to travel through Tibet, and were likewise much exercised to know what provision was being made for the despatch of a mission from Burma to Peking. With this information in hand, the wires were set in motion once more; and while Lord Rosebery indulged in further animated discussions on the advantages and counter-disadvantages of various boundary delimitations with Marquis Tsêng, Mr O'Conor successfully carried out his instructions to put off at all costs the question of frontier demarcation by the conclusion of the convention of 1886, the ​bribe for the temporary disposal of the frontier difficulty being the withdrawal of the requisition for permits for the expedition to Tibet, and the acceptance of China's demand for a decennial mission from Burma, to which, as has been pointed out, she had no valid claim. We may venture to hope that it came to the notice of his lordship that when passing through Yün-nan in 1894 (the year in which Lord Rosebery became First Minister of the Crown) Dr Morrison found the Chinese "daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai (Bhamo), as a present to the Emperor, and were the official recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle Kingdom."
Upon the fatuity of the policy which led up to this situation I have descanted elsewhere. The net results have been a tiresome and long-protracted series of negotiations which only found solution in the convention ​of 1897, and indirectly a troublesome crop of political questions culminating in the Younghusband Mission of 1904 to the capital of Tibet.
The convention of 1886 was so far successful that it staved off for six years the question of frontier delimitation; but by a curious coincidence, with the return of Lord Rosebery to the Foreign Office in 1892 the border problem again cropped up, and in the convention of March 1st, 1894, a tentative agreement was at last drawn up.
It is unnecessary to describe the frontier herein decided upon, because, more Sinico, the provisions of the agreement were never carried into effect, a glaring breach of Article V. by the Chinese rendering the convention void. By this article England had agreed to renounce in favour of China "all the suzerain rights in and over the States of Munglem and Kiang Hung formerly possessed by the Kings of Ava concurrently with the Emperors of China." This was done with the sole proviso that "his Majesty the Emperor of China shall not, without previously coming to an agreement ​with her Brittanic Majesty, cede either Munglem or Kiang Hung, or any portion thereof, to any other nation." Since, however, the notoriously anti-British Inspector of Militia on the frontier, Li Shao Yen, immediately afterwards took it upon himself to hand over a portion of Kiang Hung to France, it became necessary to toil all over the old ground once more, and it was not until 1897 that the question was finally closed. By a convention concluded in February of that year Great Britian consented to "waive her objections to the alienation by China by the convention with France of June 20th, 1895, of territory forming a portion of Kiang Hung, in derogation of the provisions of the convention between Great Britain and China of March 1st, 1894," in return for certain concessions on China's part in connection with the previously arranged frontier. By this instrument it was determined that the frontier to be demarcated should commence at a high peak situated approximately in latitude 25° 35′ and longitude 98° 14′ east of Greenwich, and terminate at a point on the Mekong where the district ​of Kiang Cheng impinges upon the territory of Kiang Hung. It was agreed that a tract of country to the south of the Nam Wan river belonging to China should be held on a perpetual lease by Great Britain, afterwards fixed at 1000 rupees a-year, and that neither Munglem nor any part of Kiang Hung on the right bank of the Mekong, nor any part of it in Chinese possession on the left bank, might be ceded to any other nation without Great Britain's consent. Owing to the veil of obscurity which still hung over the geographical peculiarities of the nebulous country lying to the north of latitude 25°, it was decided that the settlement of this portion of the frontier should be left to the more accurate knowledge of a future date.
Beyond the settlement of the much-debated frontier, some attention was paid to the all-important matter of commerce and communications, which had been productive of a vast outpouring of literature and discussion, of fruitless action, and of no little disappointment and humiliation in the past. With certain specified exceptions, Great Britain granted free entry ​and free exit to importations and exportations across the frontier, while China gave reductions of three-tenths of the general tariff of the Imperial Maritime Customs on imports and four-tenths on exports over the same ground. Permission was granted China to establish a consul at Rangoon, and to Great Britain to appoint similar functionaries at Momein or Shun-ning Fu and Ssŭ-mao, and British subjects acquired the right to establish themselves and trade at these places under the same conditions as at the treaty ports in other parts of China. And beyond all this, arrangements were made for connecting the telegraphic system of the two countries; permission was accorded to "Chinese vessels carrying merchandise, ores, and minerals of all kinds, and coming from or destined for China, freely to navigate the Irrawadi on the same conditions as to dues and other matters as British vessels," and China agreed to consider whether the conditions of trade justify the construction of railways in Yün-nan, and, "in the event of their construction, to connect them with the Burmese lines."
A street in Bhamo.
​determines, as far as any document can do so, the boundaries of Great Britain and China at the junction of their respective dominions. Before touching upon the part played by a third Power—France—in the making of the North-East Frontier, it may be well to narrate briefly the events following upon the conclusion of the Agreement, thus bringing the story of the frontier, as far as Great Britain and China are concerned, up to the present day.
The actual work of demarcating the frontier, accepted by both countries in the Agreement of 1897, still remained to be done, and a party of British and Chinese commissioners were occupied with this task up to the end of the winter of 1899-1900.
The task was no easy one, and resulted in a boundary-line being marked out which is not accepted in toto to this day by the Government of China. But apart from differences between the British and Chinese commissioners as to the interpretation of the boundary clauses of the Agreement, of which more in a moment, no little difficulty was experienced owing to the attitude of the border tribes. Of these, the ​most uncouth and the most troublesome were the wild Wa, a primitive people occupying a block of territory extending for about one hundred miles along the Salwin, and for half that distance inland to the watershed between that river and the Mekong, an area bisected by the 99th parallel of east longitude and lying between and on either side of the 22nd and 23rd parallels of latitude. The most objectionable feature of this tribe is its head-hunting proclivities, though it appears that heads, being believed to be necessary to ensure good crops, peace, and prosperity, are sought after as a result of erroneous agricultural theories rather than out of mere wantonness or lust of killing. "Without a head they could not hope to have good crops.... When, therefore, a new village is formed, or a sacrifice of a special kind is needed, the young Was go out in bands head-hunting—which means that they waylay any strangers they may happen to meet and deprive them of their heads. The hunting season opens in March and lasts through April—until, in fact, ​sufficient heads to ensure a good harvest have been obtained." However worthy in intention, the habit is none the less objectionable in practice, and is, indeed, as Marco Polo would doubtless have remarked—as he did of another matter—"a very evil custom and a parlous!" The market value of different varieties of heads is, according to the 'Gazetteer of Upper Burma,' as follows: "The skulls of the unwarlike Lem come lowest. They can sometimes be had for two rupees. La'hu heads can be had for about three times as much.... Burmese heads have not been available for nearly a generation, and Chinamen's heads run to about fifty rupees, for they are dangerous game. European heads have not come on the market; there are no quotations." This last sentence, it is to be feared, no longer holds good, for two members of the boundary commission, Major W. Kiddle, R.A.M.C., and Mr A. B. Sutherland, fell victims to this peculiar greed, thus adding yet one ​more to the tragedies of the frontier. Mr Litton, too, narrowly escaped a similar fate, being saved by the prompt action of a Chinese officer.
It was found possible, however, to impress upon the understanding of the wild Was the necessity of attuning their conduct, in their intercourse with Great Britain, to the standards demanded by the canons of civilised society, and the chief difficulty in the way of a satisfactory and lasting delimitation arose not out of the social faux pas of the border tribes, but out of the action of the Chinese commissioners themselves. All went well until the winter of 1898-1900, when the Chinese commissioner suddenly raised objections to the proposed demarcation of a section of the frontier, about 200 miles in length, lying between a point at the confluence of the Nam Hsung with the Nam Ting on the north and Pangsang Nalawt on the south. Producing a map, now known as the Hsieh map, which he declared had been signed by Lord Rosebery and the Chinese Minister Hsieh in 1894, he accused the British ​commissioner, Sir G. Scott, of duplicity, and wound up an insulting despatch by declaring that the British Foreign Office had secretly prepared the map attached to the Agreement of 1897 with a view to altering the line of frontier shown on the Hsieh map.
The British commissioner, on the other hand, held that if forgery had been committed, it was not in Downing Street but in Peking; and knowing something of the immense capacity of Chinese diplomatists for wasting time, judged that it would be better to complete the demarcation of the frontier first, and then begin to think about despatch writing afterwards. This was accordingly done, and the section of the frontier thus demarcated without the assistance of the Chinese, and known as "Scott's line," was forwarded with the rest of the frontier line to Peking. Here it remains, and is likely to remain, the subject from time to time of polite discussion between the representatives of Great Britain and of China, the former declaring that it is regarded by his Government as the frontier, and the latter ​rejoining with perfect amiability that this is a view of the case with which the Chinese Government is quite unable to concur.
Beyond the demarcation of the Sino-Burmese frontier south of the high peak mentioned in the Agreement, a boundary-line between the territories of the two countries north of that point has been roughly laid down. From the peak, situated in latitude 25° 35′ and longitude 98° 14′, the line has been carried north-east to a peak 11,500 feet high in the range hemming in the Salwin on the west and thence due north along the summit of the range to a point midway between latitude 26° and 27°, whence it has been taken across the river to the top of the range forming the watershed between the Salwin and the Mekong. From here it is drawn north again along the summit of the range to a point about midway between latitudes 27° and 28°, where the Salwin is recrossed and the line ​carried due west to a point on the river Nmai Hka, where Yün-nan is supposed to give place to Tibet.
The "North-East Frontier," then, may now be said to be a geographical reality, and the only work in connection with it which still remains—the introduction of civilisation, law, and order into the areas occupied by the less known of the border tribes—is a task which can be taken up at leisure, and which will doubtless be regarded as one which does not call for any immediate action. The dictum of ​Sir Robert Peel, that "when civilisation and barbarism come into contact, the latter must inevitably give way," has the assent of history, and while it is certain that the eventual result of the contact of civilisation and barbarism in this neighbourhood will be in keeping with the teaching of history, there appears to be little to be gained by endeavouring to bring about by rapid and violent stages that which must sooner or later follow with the unerring certainty of a law of nature.
* ↑ Lord Curzon in his Romanes Lecture, delivered at Oxford in 1907.
* ↑ Letter to his mother, August 24th, 1874.
* ↑ Letter to his parents, August 15th, 1874.
* ↑ Letter to his parents, August 15th, 1874.
* ↑ 'Mandalay to Momein'—Dr Anderson.
* ↑ 'Mandalay to Moinein'—Dr Anderson.
* ↑ By the Chifu Convention of 1876.
* ↑ For the history of the annexation of Upper Burma, see next chapter.
* ↑ The origin of the complimentary decennial mission between the two countries was as follows. In 1765 the ill-treatment of certain Chinese traders at the Ta-ping river and in Keng Tung brought down a Chinese army, which met with defeat. Two years later a second Chinese force of 250,000 foot and 25,000 horse again met with disaster, the Burmese regaining the eight Shan States of the Ta-ping basin which had been included in the Chinese empire for many centuries. The following year the Chinese made one more effort to inflict defeat upon the redoubtable Burmans, but finding themselves again unequal to the task, opened negotiations and concluded a treaty in which, according to the Burmese, no mention was made of Burma being a vassal of China, but an arrangement come to by which the respective monarchs of China and Burma were to exchange letters and presents once every ten years. Though Chinese records lay great stress upon the duty of Burma to send tribute to Peking, and omit all reference to any duty to reciprocate the mission, the Burmese contention is supported by the fact that China was, in point of fact, the first to send a mission, which reached Theinni in 1787, carrying a large number of presents and a letter from the Emperor K'ien Lung couched in terms of equality, except that he spoke of himself as the "elder brother," and of the King of Ava as his "younger brother." (See Sir A. Phayre's 'History of Burma.')
* ↑ 'Far Cathay and Farther India'—General A. R. MacMahon—p. 5.
* ↑ 'An Australian in China.' The italics are mine.
* ↑ See in 'On the Outskirts of Empire in Asia,' chapter xxvii., entitled "A Tibetan Episode."
* ↑ 'Gazetteer of Upper Burma,' part i., vol. i. p. 495.
* ↑ F. W. Carey, 'Journal of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,' vol. xxxvi.
* ↑ 'Gazetteer of Upper Burma,' part i., vol. i. p. 502.
* ↑ The following is the reply to a question put by me to the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons on June 1st, 1908: "The Chinese Government have not yet accepted the line which H.M. Government notified to them as, in their opinion, constituting the boundary. Negotiations have taken place at intervals, but no settlement has been arrived at yet."
* ↑ Speaking of Upper Burma at Mandalay on November 28th, 1901, Lord Curzon said of it that it was especially interesting to one who had made frontiers of empire his peculiar study, and who knew no spectacle more absorbing than that of Oriental peoples passing by a steady progress from backwardness to civilisation, without at the same time forfeiting the religious creed, the traditions, or the national characteristics of their race. "Here in Upper Burma," he declared, "both extremes of this process may be observed; for, on the one hand, in the settled tracts are an intelligent and tractable race, immersed in agriculture or business, and living under the sway of one of the oldest and most cultured religions; on the other hand, one has only to proceed to the north-eastern border to encounter tribes who still derive pleasure from cutting off each other's heads.... Here is a situation and a task that will occupy the genius of the British race for many a long day to come.... I rejoice to think of what remains for those who come after me to do, and that not for many-generations will India fail within its borders to provide my countrymen with the work for which their instincts seem especially to fit them among the nations of the earth."
* ↑ In the Scinde debate of 1844.