Governor, Traveller, Scholar, Spy: The Career of Sir Cecil Clementi - Graham Hutchings - Bookniverse

Governor, Traveller, Scholar, Spy traces the life and career of the talented colonial administrator Sir Cecil Clementi, who rose to become governor of Hong Kong and then the Straits Settlements. He governed Hong Kong at a time of revolutionary upheaval in China which brought the city to its economic knees and threatened Britain’s possession of the territory. Clementi strongly objected to London’s attempts to come to terms with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government and sought to protect Hong Kong from the intellectual currents sweeping through the mainland by making the city a bastion of traditional Chinese culture. As Governor of Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Federated Malay States, he championed the traditional rights of the Malay rulers and suppressed national sentiment among Malaya’s swelling Chinese population. Alarmed by his determination to press ahead with such policies despite opposition, the government in London forced Clementi into early retirement. This is the first full-length biography of a highly gifted colonial administrator who spent half of his roughly 30-year career in Hong Kong and played a major role in the city’s history. As a young official, Clementi quickly mastered Chinese and published translations of Cantonese poetry. He undertook epic journeys across China on intelligence-gathering missions, was closely involved in the land settlement in the New Territories, and the creation of Hong Kong University. As governor, he championed the development of Kai Tak airport and the provision of Hong Kong’s water supply. He also appointed the first Chinese member of the city’s Executive Council. Yet he resisted reforms to the controversial mui-tsai system under which Chinese girls served as housemaids to Chinese families on the grounds that it was a Chinese ‘tradition’. This study of his career, in which he was also posted to British Guiana and Ceylon, sheds light on how Britain administered the far-flung territories that formed its empire.