SHANGHAI SETTLEMENTS 03 



shooting, and racing kept them physically fit. If in many 

 ways they were lamentably lacking in foresight, in other 

 ways they were highly commendable. 



There have been, of course, observers whose recorded 

 opinions have taken severer forms. But on the whole, out- 

 side opinion has been favourable. One poetic soul apostro- 

 phised the settlement as "the abode of bliss." Another 

 referred to it as "this flourishing colony." A third called it 

 "anomalous." In 1889, the present Sir Henry Norman paid 

 us a visit. He did not come on deck till he was near the 

 bend by the Old Dock, and then the full view of the Bund 

 burst upon him. He was much impressed, and his appre- 

 ciative remarks are summed up in two words — "surprising 

 Shanghai." But it fell to a British Duke to utter the most 

 sweeping denunciation of the place that we have on record. 

 It is but fair to say that this opinion was passed a score or so 

 of years before Sir Henry Norman's visit. But as it was 

 given in the House of Lords by the Duke of Somerset, it 

 received much attention. His Grace assured the house that 

 civil and naval officers who had visited all parts of Europe 

 and America had told him that there was not in all the 

 world such a "sink of iniquity" as Shanghai. 



It should be carefully remembered that this severe 

 statement was based on the conditions found on the China 

 coast during the last decade of the Taiping rebellion. The 

 Duke may have spoken in haste, as the Psalmist acknow- 

 ledged he had done once upon a time, but if he had collected 

 all the evidence we now have, he need not have modified 

 his statement except by saying that his words referred to the 

 hap -hazard collection of tatterdemalion cosmopolitanism then 

 collected here and elsewhere at that time in China's ports. 

 Our Bamboo Town in Hongkew was a local representative 

 of it. There was never a period, of course, when such a 

 sweeping denunciation was deserved by the ordinary resi- 

 dents. Wits, however, seized on the Duke's stinging 

 phrase, and for a time the settlement was known as the 

 "Model Sink." 



It has also been known, and for excellent though un- 

 official reasons, as the Anglo-American Settlement. Anglo- 

 American co-operation beginning in Canton was transferred 

 to Shanghai as soon as such firms as Eussell & Co., 

 Olyphant & Co., and others had established themselves here. 

 In the early days nineteen-twentieths of the trade in 

 Shanghai was done under the Union Jack and the Stars and 

 Stripes. All the best portions of the settlement were in 

 English or American hands. Their Consuls and merchants 

 took the lead in all official and social undertakings. Some 



