Just Finished Reading: Empire Made Me – An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai by Robert Bickers (FP: 2003) [342pp]

It was all by accident really, prompted by an intriguing throw-away line: Here, you might find this interesting. In the box the archivist handed him was a collection of letters and a few bits of random information. Not having time to go down that particular rabbit hole just yet he made some notes and went back to his original project. But he didn’t forget that box or its contents. When time allowed he took up the challenge of putting together an ordinary person’s life – a life lived in extraordinary times and in an extraordinary place.

Richard Maurice Tinkler was a child of Empire. Born and raised in the North of England (actually not too far from where I went to University) his journey into the wider world started with an argument with his father and the desire to prove himself. He did so with a lie about his age, a complicit recruiter and a ticket to the Western Front in the First World War. Survival in those years meant growing up – fast. On his return to England Tinkler found that the promises of a ‘Land fit for Heroes’ were as empty for the reason for the war in the first place. In exasperation a family member pointed out a job advert in the local paper for police officers in Shanghai. Impulsively he applied and was accepted. But for a single trip back home he stayed the rest of his life in that oriental city.

At first things went really well despite his loathing for the ‘system’ that kept him and his working class mates at the bottom of the Imperial totem pole (or at least at the bottom of the white pole – Tinkler and his colleagues were in the strange position of essentially being servants who had their own non-white servants to look after them). He learnt the local Chinese dialect quickly and earned promotions until his underlying anger-management issues and his inability to suffer what he regarded as fools (which to be honest encompassed most of humanity) got him into trouble. Losing rank only fuelled his resentment but may have also enabled him to climb the ladder again until it all finally blew up in his face. In the final analysis he really had no one to blame but himself. Tinkler was not a very nice man. He was a racist – and not just regarding the local Chinese and Indian police units he had to work with – he had deep unresolved anger issues, used violence or the threat of violence too often to get his own way, drank far too much to be healthy (or competent on duty) and was more than a little misogynistic. He was, truth be told, a rather nasty piece of work.

But telling his tale, warts and all, (and impressively too) gives a unique window into the British Empire in China. All too often we see Imperial history told from the viewpoints of Governors of vast Imperial lands or military leaders enforcing civilisation at the point of a Maxim machine gun. Here we see what the Empire looked like and how it functioned from street level where the blood, sweat and tears of the real Imperial endeavour existed day by day. This was the Empire that people rarely saw, rarely heard about and rarely read about except in newspaper headlines. This was the Empire of drug raids, of riot control or systemic racism and oppression – even in a country that was not under Imperial control. It was, page after page, a real eye-opener to what Empire felt like on the ground through the eyes and experiences of one average, run-of-the-mill, police officer on his ‘beat’ in a faraway place. Told by an author who really shows his expertise in both China and story-telling this is a fantastic window on the 1920’s British enclave in Shanghai. If you have even a passing interest in British Imperial or Chinese history this is a must read. Highly recommended.