THE 



BRITISH SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 



The British sphere of influence or interest, as it has 

 been indifferently described by our Ministers in Parliament, 

 is defined in the despatch of Sir Claude Macdonald to the 

 Tsung-li-Yamen of the 19th February of this year (1898), as 

 " the Yang-tse region '' and the " provinces adjoining the 

 Yang-tse." A more exact definition, and one that we have 

 attempted to embody in the map attached to this work, is 

 the " Yang-tse Basin " : the boundaries of this region are 

 naturally and indisputably defined by the crests of the water 

 partings that surround the catchment area; or, in plain 

 English, the area of our so-called sphere comprises the valley 

 of the Yang-tse and the valleys of its tributaries. It is to 

 China what the valley of the Mississippi is to North 

 America, Shanghai's situation at the mouth of the Yang-tse 

 being analogous to that of New Orleans on the Mississippi ; 

 and what the valley of the Amazon is to the South American 

 continent, the total area of which is a little greater than that 

 of the Chinese Empire. In each case it is the heart of a 

 continent as represented by the valley of its greatest river. 

 In the case of China, this heart comprises an area of 600,000 

 square miles, inhabited by about 180,000,000 of the most 

 industrious and peaceable people on the world's surface. 

 It opens out a magnificent prospect for British enterprise, 

 while leaving vast regions in the wide Chinese Empire open 

 to other Powers, should the unfortunate alternative of 

 partition of spheres take the place o" equal opportunities for 

 all everywhere, in which case we must accept the Yang-tse 

 basin as a pis-aller and lose no more time in securing the 

 region allotted as our sphere by effective occupation. 



