GUNBOATS, EMPIRE & THE CHINA STATION

THE STORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY’S THIRD-LARGEST FLEET, FIGHTING FOR CONTROL OF THE CHINA STATION OUTPOST IN THE 1920S

Author: Matthew Heaslip Publisher: Bloomsbury Price: £85

In the period between the two World Wars, the Royal Navy’s third-largest fleet bore the exotic title the China Station. In his scholarly tale of British strategy in the South China Sea, author Matthew Heaslip highlights the importance of this fleet to Britain’s foreign policy and East Asian geopolitics.

These were far from peaceful times for the Royal Navy in the region and was a period of clashes in China throughout most of the 1920s. As the author points out, “Indeed, the country (China) was the scene of the Navy’s most sustained active deployment over the entire interwar period and events in China came very close to ending Britain’s peace.”

During this decade, the British Empire maintained considerable interests in China, built up after Britain forced open the country’s borders to Western merchants through the two Opium Wars between 1839 and 1860.

The Chinese navy of the day was no match for Britain’s sea power, but it did pose a threat to Royal Navy gunboats and sloops.

An additional threat in those years was an increasingly aggressive Japan, which became a factor in Royal Navy tactical planning. Concerns over both Asian challenges led to one of the largest- peacetime deployments of Royal Navy warships east of Suez.

After World War I the China Station found itself on the front line. This decade of ‘violent peace’ brought fundamental shifts in Britain’s relationship with China, and the Royal Navy played a central role in maintaining the Empire and Britain’s strategic planning. This was underscored by the almost-forgotten Shanghai Crisis of 1927, a conflict brought to light in this book through the author’s meticulous research, which took Britain to the point of partial mobilisation.