Sir Robert Hart

Sir Robert Hart was a historical figure associated with Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service. The record associates Sir Robert Hart with United Kingdom / Qing China.

Hart entered the British consular service in China in the 1850s and became Inspector-General of the Imperial Maritime Customs in 1863. Under his leadership the service collected a major share of Qing revenue, administered lighthouses and postal functions and became an important intermediary between the Chinese government and foreign powers.

In Robert Bickers’ The Boxers, China, and the World, Edited by Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann, this multidisciplinary collection reconsiders the Boxer movement and the international war of 1900. In Robert Bickers’ The Scramble for China, beginning before the First Opium War, Robert Bickers explains how military technology, commerce and imperial ambition transformed China’s relationship with Britain and other foreign powers. Defeat opened treaty ports and widened foreign privileges, while rebellion and fiscal crisis placed increasing pressure on the Qing state. In Robert Bickers’ Treaty Ports in Modern China, Edited by Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, this collection examines the legal and physical structures that made China’s treaty ports distinctive. Contributors study concessions, landholding, municipal government, policing, river conservancy, taxation and property, showing how foreign rights were translated into institutions embedded within Chinese cities.