A Pellucid Twilight: Dislocated to Success, #3

By Iain Bowen

The third and final volume of Viscount Fawsley's memoirs of a 1980s Britain somehow dislocated to 150 years in the past. The world has mainly adjusted to the presence of a modern Britain on the world stage, but some cannot accept some modern attitudes leading to the Cyprus Crisis. Where Norman St John-Stevas, Viscount Fawsley, concludes his career as Foreign Secretary by once again concluding a successful peace treaty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223479970

Book preview

This book is a work of fiction. While ‘real-world’ characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

Published by Sea Lion Press, 2020. All rights reserved.

To Frederick, the most Cantabrigian of Philosopher-Kings

Cambridge/Funchal, 2004

This volume is essentially split into two parts. The first, being the remainder of my tenure as Foreign Secretary, mainly covers the Cyprus Crisis – which, of course, led to the Ottoman War and then, finally, to the Treaty of Birmingham. The second part covers some activities after my retirement from full-time politics, partly as observations from my role as master of Emmanuel College but also when called upon for my expertise, either by the Government, the media or – in some cases – by overseas powers. This covers the period from my leaving the government to just after the formal end of the Pragmatic War after the Bayerischer Untergang. Of course, I have had some minor involvement and even employment since then in a wide range of roles, from assisting with the Treaty of Konstanz, which finally settled the Swabian situation in 1995, to being the advisor on the 2003 film about the final denouements of the Pragmatic War, Downfall, by the very talented Joseph Wright.

This book has been delayed somewhat, partly by the nature of some of the Ottoman War pieces, where especial care had to be used to not reveal one particular source who has since passed on but who still has family in The City. It was also possible, when the death of the Sultan occurred, to finally allow us to reveal that he had been transported to the United Kingdom during the Ottoman War and had spent just over a decade happily living in London on a reasonable pension and making a considerable contribution to the advancement of calligraphic arts. I am particularly grateful to his cis-descendant Eric for additional information in that area, but his sad demise led me to be able to remove a couple of the Veils of Mystery which had been previously been imposed by the intelligence services. Similarly, the 1997 death of Sir Alan Clark and subsequent publishing of his highly-acclaimed diaries has allowed a little more reflection on certain matters, especially with regard to that short period of high farce that, at the time, I christened the Clark Putsch.

Readers will note that there is less and less mention of domestic politics in this volume than in previous ones. As Foreign Secretary – and, indeed, as Foreign Secretary from the Upper House – I found my interest in such matters declining over the years; by the time this volume commences, with the exception of trade matters and Foreign Office matters I took note of but played little part in the wider political discussions. I was certainly sure that the Conservative Party was the right one for the job but, in the same way that the electorate became jaded with the Conservatives, I had become jaded with some parts of high office and this shows in the writing of this volume, where less and less attention has been paid to the domestic scene as the years passed.

As ever, I am grateful to my publishers, Messrs Faber and Faber.

Chapter 1

Of course, in foreign affairs, it is often the quiet ones that you have to really worry about. For all the noise that came out of some places, all the bluster and sometime the fury, most people knew that crossing the British was not a good idea and, while they might make some noises for domestic consumption about immoral people, heretics or kaffirs, they were often as meek as a lamb when it came down to reality. The Spanish were a fine example of this; relations behind the scenes were actually surprisingly good and the amount of trade being done was increasing, but there had to be the odd public act of defiance (which we were often told about in advance) and we usually got one of the tabloids to respond to it in a suitably crude manner – not that some of them needed much instigation. There were some exceptions to this; the Russians honestly thought they were untouchable and were often preposterous, while some of the minnows of the HRE and Italy basked in their insignificance, knowing that they could continue being completely ultramontane and desperately unpleasant and that we wouldn’t actually care. We hoped they had learnt the lessons of Mr Moorcock’s rescue from Salzburg, in that, if they directly threatened an innocent British Citizen, then we would deal with that issue by suitable means – diplomatic or, if needs be, military.

It was usually people like the Austrians or the Württembergers who managed to pull something fairly spectacular off, didn’t brag about it and therefore didn’t get any remedial action taken against them – despite the fury of the Tebbit. They were the quiet men of Europe, playing the few cards they had very carefully and therefore being able to extract the Michael somewhat. The most recent Austrian stunt had been to somehow smuggle a significant amount of modern machinery on the forbidden list to their new armoury at Wiener Neustadt while at the same time getting good press in the UK for passing a small tranche of further reforms involving the removal of the last restrictions against Jews and Protestants (although not citizenship for the Jews at that time), redefining the administrative hierarchies of Cisleithania and suggesting that perhaps, fairly soon, the lowest level of that hierarchy might be elected by some of the people. They were basically begging for an A-rating and we were in the awkward position of having to say we would consider it while trying to track down some corrupt officials who had passed a large consignment of ‘pianos’ destined for Wiener Neustadt through the Tilbury docks.

As was pointed out at the time, they had nothing that the Poles didn’t have in Krakow, and there were certainly other bits of high quality engineering equipment that had slipped out, but I was told this shipment was actually a significant amount. The problem was that we also didn’t want them to know just how firmly we had the Wiener Neustadt armoury infiltrated with multiple sources, some of which may have had dubious dual allegiances. There was one chap there who was the child of a Sudeten refugee who was loyal to the UK but also very passionate about keeping the Sudetenland in Habsburg hands. We were sure that if, for instance, they started producing war gasses, we would know in an instant, but otherwise he felt his loyalty was with his ancestral kith and kin. It was decided to do nothing except monitor further and send that A-rating to a committee who would chunter over it for a least a year or so. After all, Lucien Yeomans' little secret of the concrete lathe had been out there for a while; it had not been restricted because it had been forgotten, and they were becoming more and more common and of better quality. The main restriction, I understood, was the lack of electrical power. Norman was considering reclassifying again; happily, that also went to a committee and, by the time they reported, the situation had changed and restrictions were released rather than tightened.

Heading further East, you then had to deal with some of the odder oriental despots who did not like their power challenged at all. Luckily, the recent change of Emperor in China had meant a change of ideas at the helm and a very limited amount of expensive goodies were making their way to China for use at the Imperial Court. Of course, there were massive amounts of face involved here and I understood that there were little men in Phuket who placed ‘Made in China’ signs (or the equivalent thereof) on their goods and provided instruction booklets for some of them in beautiful calligraphy. Other items, of course, were classified as tribute from the barbarians of the Yellow-Headed Warlord’s Daughter. Surprisingly, when the Prime Minister heard, she didn’t mind this nickname at all, even though she had been quite put out by one or two of the names she had picked up over the years. The recent Chinese attempts to re-establish relations with their community in the UK had been clumsy at best and we did not have to worry about much being passed to them at all; in fact, from what we could tell, the Chinese community in the UK was far more interested in establishing links with Chinese communities in Asia who were outside of the Middle Kingdom. They were our main source of information on what was happening in the Philippines, and very useful at keeping an eye on the VOC’s various claims in the East Indies.

With some of the difficult cases, it was useful to have Alan in charge of defence; previous defence secretaries had been a little bit avuncular at times, and some people had traded on this. I had previously occasionally had to resort to using Norman T to play Mr Nasty, seeing as he did it so well and rather enjoyed doing it. With Alan, it came quite naturally; he had, as far as I could tell, no qualms whatsoever and also naturally managed a suitable level of bored dignity which was subliminally well understood. Shipping going to and from Phuket from Japan and Korea had for a while been molested on and off by semi-official pirates out of Okinawa – not our shipping, no one was that stupid after about 1981, but that of our friends bringing goods to Phuket. They had been warned before, but Alan dealt with the situation very firmly. In the old days we used to send a gunboat; these days, it seems, we send a cruise missile instead. We have had zero problems with Sho Testu, the new ruler of the Okinawans, since that little demonstration and commerce flows freely; nor were there any rumblings of complaint from the Satsumas, who were theoretically the overlords of Okinawa.

Alan was the consummate Mr Nasty. If anyone asked if the UK would really send an entire squadron of Mavericks to obliterate your army, we just referred them to Alan – they rarely had any doubts about it after meeting him. This would have been completely unacceptable before the Dislocation and, to be perfectly honest, it was fairly borderline even afterwards; we occasionally referred to it in a veiled way as Palmerstonian diplomacy, but the reality was somewhat more rougher than that. Some people blamed it on aggressive trans-RN captains, often now in command of large patrol boats or corvettes, who had no qualms about protecting British trade and power, but none of those have yet to command a nuclear submarine, which at that time were our instrument of supplying a small number of Assegai cruise missiles to selected problem targets.

Of course, there was also an element of out of sight, out of mind. We were generally a lot nicer in Europe, where there was always the chance that there might be a stringer for one of the newspapers around. This was probably a good thing; being the iron fist in the velvet glove was acceptable, replacing the glove with knuckle dusters wasn’t, and the latter was increasingly the case east of Lawrence Marks – except in India, where we were on our best behaviour for a number of complex reasons which varied amongst who you talked to in the party. Still, it had to be said that, despite this situation, our hands-off and friendly trade policy was really starting to pay off in terms of trade and influence on the sub-continent; our advice was being asked on the production of a treaty between the Marathas and the Mughals and, if that was accomplished, there would be significant benefits for the UK. However, east of there, and along the East African coast, we could be really rather stroppy with some of the local bigwigs – and the problem with diplomacy by gunboat is that you ended up needing a lot of gunboats, hence the Royal Navy being the only one of our armed services to be larger in 1990 than it was in 1980.

All of this was fairly routine work and was somewhat put in the shade by our increasing issues with the Sublime Porte, especially over Cyprus. I have always wondered what policy would have been best to deal with the Sublime Porte. We were in an awkward situation where the Porte was constantly complaining about interference by British nationals in their internal affairs. They weren’t that far wrong; the numbers of British nationals who were inside the Porte and stirring it up was growing every day. It wasn’t the parents who had come here from their now ‘captive nations’, but their grown-up children – who often held somewhat more extreme positions than those of their parents and had the means to do something about it. There were, of course, supposed to be restrictions on who could visit where and when, but they were widely ignored and in many cases officials would turn a blind eye for small sums or favours. The Porte talked about introducing a proper visa scheme, but – as ever – it was all talk.

There were small groups of British citizens causing problems in Ottoman Serbia, Iraq and the Lebanon, along with larger groups doing the same in Greece and Egypt, but the highest number were in Cyprus – and to add to the problem, they were not just on the side of Greek independence but a substantial number there were of cis-Turkish Cypriot origin as well. The Tröodos mountains had effectively been independent of the Porte for a couple of years by the time of the crisis; there had been clashes between groups with cis-leadership in Cyprus and a couple of nasty near-riots in parts of north-east London between youths of Greek and Turkish Cypriot heritage. All in all, it was believed that there were around two thousand UK citizens on the island – some legally, some not legally – and therefore it was an item of concern to both ourselves and to the Porte. Several were already not coming home due to death or incarceration, but in each case there was good evidence that they had been heavily involved in ‘resistance activities’; others had been trying to seize land to build a particularly popular cis-mosque which had not been built until our 1760.

None of these were at the serious intervention level, but we did try and make arrangements to get those incarcerated to serve time in a UK prison. I made sure that every non-minor Cyprus item came across my desk at least for a quick check. There were a number of cis-British people on both sides doing good charitable work, and even one brave charity trying to bring the communities together; we did not want to remove them and the Porte, of course, really only wanted the Greeks gone. By the start of 1988, however, it was becoming clear that we would probably have to issue a removal order soon – tensions were getting worse, mainly due to official Ottoman pressure. Previously, we had been able to exert some pressure via the Grand Vizier, but the current incumbent Hekimoğlu Ali Pasha was the twelfth Grand Vizier since the Dislocation. He was feeling worried about how long he would remain in that position and was playing the ‘standing up against the British infidel’ card; he was also on his second run at the job and had only just escaped being strangled the last time. In our history he had managed a third go, showing what a skilful player of court politics he was, but in our history there had only been eight Grand Viziers in the similar period of time.

We were lucky in that we had a very good source in Ottoman Cyprus at the time who was extremely close to the official who governed the island for the Grand Vizier, under whose direct control Cyprus nominally fell. In fact, the musahıl, or governing authority of the island, was granted to the Grand Admiral Hacı Memhet Pasha, who had then passed it onto one of his subordinates – a chap called Reşid Vrioni, who was an official of Albanian descent and who had been a Venetian galley slave for a number of years. This had somewhat embittered him against Christians and our excellent source indicated that he was ready to take serious action against the Christians of Cyprus, partly out of a sense of outrage at the rebellion in his midst, partly out of his own hatred and partly on the desires of a number of powerful landlords on the island who wanted more land and wanted Anatolian tenants instead of Greek ones. There was also an unpleasant undercurrent that Vrioni wanted to remove the Christian population from the island in toto; although this has never been confirmed, he was certainly very willing to kill many people to do this. Of course, there were those who suggested that if this happened in Cyprus, it would then follow in Crete and some of the other Aegean islands. Our information was that Vrioni was moderately serious about his comments and we kept a careful eye on him because of this. With farming improvements there was less need for workers, and more could be done without using Orthodox tenant farmers, so there was quite a lot of pressure from the landlords, some of which were very well connected back in The City. Hence, we were very pleased to have the asset that we had in Cyprus, although communications with said asset were indirect and therefore a little slow at times. The latter, of course, was true in many places.

Of course, one of the problems we had was that most people believed that Cyprus was like cis-Cyprus, a sharply divided island where the majority of the people were Greek Cypriots. The demographic actuality we had been plunged into was considerably different to that. From what we could tell there was also a difference between the Ottoman tax census and the actual demographics; we were told that a number of the Greek-speaking Muslims were actually crypto-Muslims – converts for tax reasons who kept up some Christian traditions – although this was taken with a pinch of salt. Certainly, there a lot more Muslims by percentage than in cis-Cyprus and they were divided between Greek-speaking converts and Turkish-speaking settlers who were often the descendants of soldiers. The Muslims were also distributed across most of Cyprus, although there were slightly more in the north and very few in the west of the island. There was a small number of Maronites in who had their own villages in the north of Cyprus, but they were fairly inconsequential and officially protected by the French like their kith and kin in Lebanon and Syria.

The Orthodox Christians fell under the millet system and their official spokesman was the Archbishop of Cyprus, Philotheos. We had a couple of meetings with Philotheos over the years and the general opinion was that he was no Makarios III, but he would like to be – although we were very aware that there were massive leaks in his palace, many of which went back to Vrioni. We certainly weren’t going to let him have any chance to play the demon Archbishop so we kept everything very neutral and very bland with him, strictly dealing with him only on business with the Orthodox community which required his attention rather than a lesser member of the local millet authority.

By February 1988, we were deeply considering a quit order on British nationals in Cyprus and removing our consular services from there. The estimate was that around half of the people would leave and the other half would stay; it would also mean that, short of a massacre, we would not intervene. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people predicting a massacre was quite likely in the near future if Vroni moved; the Orthodox really had nowhere else to go. Then, to add to our problem, we understood that there were a set of documentary makers with the rebels in the Tröodos. I asked the section to start gathering the evidence for a quit order on the grounds that someone would almost certainly contest it in court.

Chapter 2

The constant scheming of Tiny Rowland’s Lonrho in Africa was a persistent thorn in the side of the Commonwealth Office, who for a period after the Dislocation handled diplomatic affairs in sub-Saharan Africa. Tiny had emerged from the Dislocation a much smaller figure with relatively little in the way of ready cash, losses substantial enough to take him out of the big leagues, but still possessing enough to keep him in play. What he had as an advantage was a lot of knowledge of where important resources were, a number of staff with a very good grip on African languages and also with an understanding of African culture, which in some areas hadn’t changed that much – although it very much had in West Africa, which was a big problem for him. West Africa was much less Muslim, and there were also very few Christians; a lot of cultural practices had been removed or watered down by those two religions.

Tiny did have success in getting licenses and concessions in Angola, ones he has maintained to this day because they have the potential to be very valuable and the renewals don’t cost a lot, but his problems have been mainly down to two things: the incredibly weak control of the Portuguese colonial government in those areas and the lack of infrastructure. He was wise enough not to buy any licenses in some of the small kingdoms that Portugal claimed to control but in reality did not. This has been a common problem to mining companies outside of British South East Africa; the governments are not willing to stump up the capital for the infrastructure and the people just aren’t available to do the exploitation. On top of this, where there is something that could be done on the cheap, there tends to be a somewhat awkward British attitude to not create any more ghastly mines that kill thousands of workers.

In 1987, he restructured Lonrho after fighting off an attempted coup on the board of directors, it was divided into Lonagri, Lonmin and Lonrho. Lonagri looked after commercial farming, which was yielding some decent results in British South East Africa, mainly in commercial fruit farms where oranges were being grown in competition to Florida. Lonmin looked after the limited mining interests, which included the still-extant Katanga leases but also the management of three mines in northern Portugal which stopped it being a complete financial basket case. The remnant Lonrho was refounded as a new venture which existed, according to its charter, to supply consultancy services in mining, farming, simple manufacturing and security to overseas countries, companies and trade associations.

It was clear that Lonagri was going to be a success; while mainly BSEA-based, they had bid for and bought some large parcels of tobacco land around what would have been cis-Winston-Salem and that was an area of commercial agriculture where they had considerable prior experience to Dislocation to draw on. Similarly, they were looking at the newly-opened commercial tracts in River Plate, although they had yet to place their bids on those and there was some doubt if they would given the overall financial condition of the group. Lonmin was really the equivalent of a ‘bad bank’; it held a couple of potentially extremely lucrative but extremely difficult to exploit mining licences, but also had a number of debts and some rather high ongoing costs. However, there were rumours of a Spanish deal in the offing, assistance in opening another silver mine in Northern Mexico in return for a 99-year lease on a nickel mine in Murcia. A few more deals like that and it was perfectly possible that Lonmin might start to break even within a few years, so some people were willing to invest in it.

It was the remnant Lonrho that constantly worried the UK authorities. The general consultancy was fine; there were people who could do that in a number of companies, and they were certainly being hired by the wiser trans people. Consultancy had become a bigger and bigger thing since around 1983, although many consultants still failed to cut their cloth to what was politically and financially possible in trans-polities. What concerned the UK government was the ‘security’ aspect, where several of the consultants were either known mercenaries or had some highly dubious connections back home; quite a few were known to the police. It was well known that Tiny was without any scruples at all and would sell his proverbial grandmother for Christmas; the idea of him assisting trans governments with security issues smacked of him looking for somewhere to launch a coup. Others considered that he would find somewhere to do a Hoogstraten; after all, Lonrho had a lot of pre-Dislocation experience in Africa and it had been mentioned prominently as a potential market in the initial prospectus.

There had been security consultants before Lonrho, plenty of legitimate ex-Army personnel – and also, sadly, a number of people who had learnt their trade from Walter Mitty – had sold their expertise in Europe and in some cases further afield. This had usually taken the form of tactical training and equipment advice or, for the wiser consultants, lengthy discussions on military logistics. A few policemen had also given advice to trans governments on how to establish a proper police force, although that had been ruled out in many places as just too expensive or too complex. There had been a couple of situations where people had been interviewed under caution on returning from abroad about their activities in various places. There had been other places where we in the Foreign Office had to extract the people concerned after they had transgressed in some way or other.

There was also a murkier world out there involving some of our criminal fraternity. It was well known that someone had assassinated the governor of Syria with a modern sniper rifle in 1986 as well as providing some highly kitted-up bodyguards for the ‘interim’ governor who, as was traditional, looted the provincial treasury before being officially replaced by an appointment from The City, by which time he had long since fled the province for an unknown destination. This was eventually traced to a very dubious consultancy; while there wasn’t enough evidence to bring any charges, we did the next best thing and sent the taxmen in to rip them apart. There were concerns that the new Lonrho would get involved in this sort of thing.

Of course, at the time we were negotiating bringing back parts of Africa into the sphere of the Foreign Office. We specifically wanted East Africa, where the relations were very much tied up with various Middle Eastern powers, but also with Portugal and, to a lesser extent, France. The Commonwealth Office wanted us to have the lot, except for what could be called the front-line states, those that bordered the new Jewel in the Crown – British South East Africa. These talks were very much messed up by the Ottoman War, and it was only some time after my departure from office that any resolution was reached. The subtle change of the balance of power in East Africa meant that it came under our aegis; we also became responsible for a bit more of West Africa, but only as far down as Guinea. The rest remained very much a Commonwealth Office responsibility, to their dudgeon and our delight, although the status of Angola remained somewhat dubious. It was Portuguese, so relations with it were really ours, and this extended slightly to the fascinating Kingdom of Kongo and some of the smaller and rather less fascinating Kingdoms adjacent to Portuguese Angola.

The Commonwealth Office did have a fearful flap about Lonrho just before the Cyprus Crisis really started to get into full swing, Tiny had finally managed to make a deal with some people who looked like they meant business in the former Sierra Leone. We already had van Hoogstraten running a Conradian palm oil plantation somewhere in the Congo, but not in the Kingdom of Kongo (with whom I remain convinced we could have done a lot more a lot earlier than we did), and the idea of Tiny giving advice to despots about diamond extraction gave quite a lot of people the vapours. As it happened, it turned out to be a fairly normal consultancy contract, the difference from so many of them being that both Naimbanna and Tiny were very serious about it. As they were quite close to Guinea-Bissau, where we kept a watchful eye on a little Christian colony, we kept an eye on the Rowland deal for the Commonwealth Office at the same time; a little naughty, but we were better than them at it. They varied between the hard-bitten and the terminally naïf and their West Africa people were very much of the latter stamp. Some of them even tried to find excuses for Dahomey – ex-SOAS, of course.

As it turned out, it was a fairly mutually beneficial relationship; swarms of blood diamonds did not appear, but there came a steady supply of peanuts, palm oil, African rice and tropical hardwoods. At the time of the Cyprus Crisis cotton had started to appear, and since then rubber, cocoa and coffee have started to fill the boats at Port Loko which travel down to Tasso Island, where there is a small but modern harbour and a growing town. Tiny isn’t the only one there – the Portuguese have been trading for decades in the area and quietly spreading Catholicism – but he appears to be doing well enough out of it. Naimbanna is also doing well; decent roads are starting to be built, water supplies have been improved, vaccinations occur, the well-off of Port Loko can send their children to school or a clinic and, most importantly, several rivals within the Temne and their local rivals the Mende have been put well back in their box by musket-armed soldiers who were probably trained by Tiny’s men. None of this really affected the UK, and Naimbanna seemed a decent steady sort, so by the time we finally prised West Africa off the Commonwealth Office in 1994 the Temne kingdom got rather high marks, a small legation and a helpful dollop of aid. They’ve been doing fairly well since, and Tiny made steady money from them until he died in 1998.

Chapter 3

March is always a strange month. It is still quite wintry at the start of the month, especially since the Dislocation, and snow is still lying in quite a lot of higher ground – but we have adapted in the UK and become much better at dealing with snow. This isn’t saying a lot, because we were pretty awful at dealing with snow beforehand, but luckily there were still a lot of people who remembered 1963 and we used their experience. We also have the data which tells us which years are going to be particularly bad and the boffins tell us that still holds fairly true, it is about 3° centigrade warmer in London than it is according to the records and about 1° centigrade warmer than the records outside of the cities. There are a variety of reasons for this which I won’t even pretend to understand, although Margaret always seemed to have a quite a good grasp on them – you sometimes forget she did Chemistry before she did Law.

Of course, as the start of spring, it is also the time where in many places rulers who have spent the winter taking counsel from their advisors spring into action. From central-heated, neon-lit, prosperous London, it is just another season; in other places it is time to start raising the armies for war. Some foolish journalists have talked of a new Pax Britannica bringing peace to the world, but there are plenty of powers who are coming round to thinking that we will not intervene if they choose to start on their age-old squabbles again. The lesson has been learnt that you do not mess with the UK, and no-one discusses having a pop at the UK’s perceived friends and allies, but there are plenty of people looking for a casus belli out there, wishing to revive an old one, or in some of the wilder and woolier areas just deciding to have a go. However, at least in Europe, peace held in the spring of 1988; we did hear of internal problems in Iran, there was quite a bit of adjustment going on in West Central Africa, and there was probably something unpleasant happening in Central Asia and in northern parts of Indochina, but these were areas with minimal UK influence – although on the latter the Thais and various Assamese peoples kept us reasonably well informed, if in a somewhat tardy manner and with a soupçon of bias. In the rest of the world, peace reigned, although there were plenty of places where you could imagine that it would not take very much to bring things up to a seething boil of warfare again.

So, when you make a major advance in an otherwise difficult area of the world, it can be very pleasing. The Chinese had changed their tune since the accession of the new Emperor; the old Emperor had been very hostile, but was content to milk us for as much silver as possible in return for partially satisfying our desperate need for tea. He had, however, been immensely worried about ‘contamination’, forbidding all Western products and desperately trying to get us out of the Canton area. However, for a number of reasons, he died before his time and was succeeded by his son the Qianlong Emperor, who was much more capable. He swiftly used much of the silver to crush the Miao rebellion and imposed something that looked more like a peace than a wasteland, which was a change of tack for China. When this was done, he turned to the problem of the red-headed barbarians where his policy appeared to be slightly looser that his predecessors; we did wonder where his advice was coming from but, as far as I know, that remains a mystery to this day. The common hypothesis was that he had no modern advisors, but some of the lessons of China’s problems had been learnt from modern books. We knew that his court had a couple of cis-spokesmen in London, but we had also learnt that they absolutely despised them and only had them to do translation, as it was below them to learn English. He had also loosened his trade policy slightly, having had several shipments of luxury goods; we understood he was very keen on architecture and at one point had proposed we build a palace for him. That idea had gone away after a while, but the latest ‘tribute’ which had been set off against the tea bill had included quite a large number of books on the subject, as well as things like a hundred cameras and a thousand canisters of Calor Gas. John Major wittily commented at Foreign Office Prayers that we should open a branch of Boots for film processing in Canton.

Our sources within Qing China were de minimis to say the least: a certain amount of gossip from the merchants of Canton; the odd very subtle and often deliberate hint passed on by a minor Imperial official; casual remarks by people in disguise in Canton, Batavia or Phuket who were believed to be more important imperial officials. A small field of Chinese Kremlinology had come from examining the odd edict or speech by an official in Canton, along with a certain amount of information from the Koreans, who were always very forthcoming on what they knew of Chinese matters. The Viet Kingdoms also had excellent sources, at least about the southern provinces of China, but they were not very forthcoming with it. Of course, there were massive risks for Chinese citizens talking to us; to be caught passing on information to the British or to be in possession of British goods without permission (which could be capriciously and retroactively withdrawn, we understood) was to invite an unpleasant and often lingering sentence of death.

Our understanding was that there was little change from the historical domestic policy of the Qianlong Emperor; there was the interest in architecture, the interest in the Manchu language, further work on the Banner system and the reconciliation with the remnants of the Ming. With the exception of the settlement of Inner Mongolia and Western Manchuria with Han Chinese, which was seemingly happening ten years earlier than in our history, there appeared to be little change to any other policy; the treasury was said to be full to the roof and yet there was no cut in taxes. Historically, of course, there had been some tax cuts later in the Emperor’s reign, although there had also been a massive amount of corruption conducted by favourites – who, in most cases, had yet to be born. Given the reported tendency to extremely harsh action that the Qing took in such cases, it was perhaps better that the thieving favourites were not born.

On his foreign policy, there was little word; it was known that the attempted settlement of otherwise sparsely-populated Inner Mongolia and Western Manchuria was aimed at the Koreans and the Russians. There had been some expectation of ructions when the Koreans had started putting settlers into the Amur river valley, but there were none. However, this was the emperor who had conducted the Ten Great Campaigns; unless he tried to suppress the Gurkhas, there was very little British interest in those. Any impartial look at them would reveal that some had been unsuccessful, and all had been very expensive; we wondered if he had noticed. However, his work on the Banner system seemed to indicate that some future military action was considered; because of this work I had one of my people write a submission to Norman for one of his spies in the sky to be deployed over China in the fullness of time. Obviously, I don’t know if it was, but I know the request was taken seriously.

His policy toward us was certainly better than his father but had some similarity. We noticed that Qing officials in Phuket were very interested in the agricultural changes we had made there. Others noticed how the Phuket tin mine had been changed and had seen the smelter being built there; they also knew what a camera was for, and we persuaded the local photo-processing centre to give us copies – eventually they managed to get the hang of developing themselves, we presumed. Most of their ‘tribute’ was in luxury items, but there was an increasing number of books being asked for, although most were not provided; we did not have them in Chinese and, in some cases, we had no intent on providing them. The one thing they were adamant on was that we had to leave Canton; they were absolutely petrified of contamination and there were far too many Cantonese speakers in the UK. You got the feeling of someone bound within a Confucian mindset attempting to try and apply those principles to the UK.

In the end the latest offer was Foochow, a very substantive offer; the whole of the Mawei and Changle districts were to be given to the UK on an 888-year lease to do with as we pleased, with the only requirement being that we did not stop Chinese trade through the waters of the northern branch of the Min River out to the open sea. The inhabitants could remain or be removed as per our wish. All trade with the Qing would be done through there and would be subject to a set percentage tariff of 20% on imports and 5% on exports. The UK could take control from the Chinese New Year, two years after the final signing of the treaty, and was welcome to send a small advance party. Other foreigners could use the lease, but goods could only be traded at four exchange points on the border by British and Qing designated factors. The RN liked it, the Company liked it and there was no price tag or outrageous demand attached. We gave a conditional acceptance within a week and the road finally looked clear to a Chinese treaty; needless to say, we had to wait a while for our answer.

Of course, we were still running a trade deficit with Qing China and would continue to do so for many years, although it slowly reduced year on year, but it was an improvement on the previous situation. Foochow would eventually, after the treaty was sealed, prove to be a place where there was somewhat of a meeting of minds and the gathering of intelligence became a little easier, but it was still clear that, unless we marched on it, the only way to see the Forbidden City for the foreseeable future would be by photo-reconnaissance.

Chapter 4

As March started, in a somewhat dismal and soggy way, it became apparent that the situation on the island of Cyprus was starting to become even more dangerous than usual. The fairly small Cyprus garrison had been reinforced with another regiment from Constantinople; we were told by our sources in The City that these were not pukka janissaries but a villainous crew of başıbozuk, which could best be described in modern terms a as penal battalion. They also told us that a second reinforcement was planned of a group of Kurdish sebkan from Cilicia, and that this was probably imminent. We of course contacted our sources on the island of Cyprus, both Greek and Turkish, to find out what they knew about these movements; the Greek side returned nothing, but the Turkish side was somewhat more forthcoming and told us that the rumours were true.

We had good sources in Cyprus on both sides. Plenty of London-Cypriots from both communities had returned to their home island in an attempt at uplift; the Greeks had found themselves hated by the Ottoman authorities and had ended up funding the Resistance, while the Turks had found themselves also hampered by the Ottoman authorities and were somewhat surprised by this. However, some had managed to make a home, usually a rather palatial one in their ancestral village, and a few had wheedled their way into the confidences of the administration. One thing was common to both sides; they kept their links with their British home and many of them became some of our best informers.

I have previously referred to ‘our source in Cyprus’; now that the conflict is all done and dusted, it can be revealed that this source was Asil Nadir, the former nylon ladies’ garments manufacturer. Mr Nadir, a British citizen of Turkish Cypriot heritage, had fled the UK