French Indochina and the Kwang-chow-wan Postal Steamer Service, 1900-1918

Abstract

In 1900, the French territory of Kwang-chow-wan (KCW) in Southwest China was placed under the administration of the Government-General of Indochina in Hanoi and was also linked to Indochina by the subsidised postal steamer Hué, a medium-sized 703-gross-ton merchant vessel. The decisions were taken by Paul Doumer, Governor-General of Indochina from 1897 to 1902, and one of the most ardent supporters of the expansion of French influence in South China. The postal steamer line was operated from 1900 to 1910, and again from 1913 to 1915 by the Tonkin Shipping Company (Compagnie de Navigation Tonkinoise) based in Haiphong, the major port of Tonkin, northern Indochina. The Tonkin Shipping Company was an affiliate of the French-Indochinese firm of Marty et d’Abbadie, founded in 1886, in which the Frenchmen Auguste Raphael Marty (1841-1914) and Jules d’Abbadie (1853-1904) were partners. The Tonkin Shipping Company’s main field of operation was the greater Gulf of Tonkin region. The greater Gulf of Tonkin region stretching between northern French Indochina and the Pearl River Delta was the maritime region of Southwest China which was, in around 1900, thickly interconnected by a multitude of ships plying between four main ports: Haiphong, the shipping hub of Tonkin, with its major rice exporting industry; Pakhoi and Hoihow, the open Chinese ‘treaty ports’, mainly exporting vegetables and cattle to Hong Kong and South China; and Hong Kong, the British crown colony at the mouth of the Pearl River with its important international free port serving as an economic turnstile at the crossroads of intercontinental and interregional shipping routes. KCW came to join these four main ports, with the territory located halfway between Tonkin and Hong Kong, after was occupied by French naval troops in 1898 and made an integral part of French Indochina in 1900.