Book Review: A Stormy Petrel: The Life and Times of John Pope Hennessy

Journal of the

Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 香港皇家亞洲學會學報

Volume 60

2020

Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Council Members for 2019–2020 President Vice President Past Presidents Hon. Secretary Hon. Treasurer Hon. Activities Coordinator Hon. Editor Hon. Librarian Hon. Archivist Hon. Councillors

vacant Dr Helen Tinsley Mr Michael Broom, Mr Robert Nield, Dr Patrick Hase Mr David McKellar Ms Connie Carmichael Dr Helen Tinsley Dr Stephen Davies Ms Vivian So Wing Yan Mr Chun-man Yip Mr Donald Gasper, Ms Davina Lee, Mr Robert Bunker, Mr Roy Delbyck, Dr. Kwong Chi Man

Administrator:

Ms Ivy Ho (resigned Oct 2019) Ieuan Harding

The Society The China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was founded in Hong Kong in 1847. Six parts of its Transactions were published from 1847 to 1859 after which the Society ceased activity. One hundred years later it was revived in Hong Kong as the Hong Kong Branch of the RoyalAsiatic Society.

The object of the Society is to encourage an active interest in East Asia, and in Hong Kong in particular, through lectures and discussions, overseas visits, and by publishing an annual journal. A brochure containing a short history of the Hong Kong Society, its activities, and how to become a member, is available from the Administrator, GPO Box 3864, Hong Kong, or by emailing to membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.

Further information about the Society is available on its website: www. royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 香港皇家亞洲學會學報 Editorial Board Editor: Associate Editor: Members:

Dr Stephen Davies Dr Colin Day Ms Davina Kwok-yu Lee, Dr Cecilia Chu, Dr Kwong Chi Man, Mr Eric S.K. Mok, Dr Christopher Munn, Dr Robert Peckham, Dr Carol C.L. Tsang

International Editorial Advisory Committee Hugh Baker Robert Bickers Paul A. Cohen Patrick Conner Poshek Fu Iona Man-Cheong Elizabeth Yuk Yee Sinn Paul A. Van Dyke James L. Watson Winnie Wong

Emeritus Professor of Chinese, SOAS, University of London Professor of History, University of Bristol Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, Harvard University Director, Martyn Gregory Gallery, London Professor of History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of History, Stony Brook University-SUNY HK Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong Department of History, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Harvard University Department of Rhetoric, University of California Berkeley

266

Books

A Stormy Petrel: The Life and Times of John Pope Hennessy

by P. Kevin MacKeown Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2020, 473 pages with 5 colour and 8 B&W illustrations. ISBN: 978-962-9373-77-1, HK$238 (Reviewed by Stephen Davies) This is Kevin MacKeown’s second tilt at writing a life of one of the interesting but flawed characters who people the pages of Hong Kong’s story.1 It is an equal success although written in a quite different way: the first with a nascent science as the hook on which to hang a less than fulfilled life, the second with a less than fulfilled life as the hook on which to hang a narrative of the way the British Empire was ruled, or perhaps misruled.

There seems no obvious comparison between the first Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, William Doberck, and Hong Kong’s eighth governor. That’s until one tilts one’s head a little and sees two outsiders in Britain’s colonial system—Doberck the expatriate, pedantically scientific Dane; Pope Hennessy the patriotic Irishman and Roman Catholic. Both obdurate and convinced they were right and others wrong. Both less than fair to their subordinates—one thinks of Doberck and Frederic Figg and Pope Hennessy and Ernst Eitel. Both with somewhat unusual married lives…

Such comparisons cannot be taken far, it’s true. And in John Pope Hennessy, about whom opinions were much more radically divided, Kevin MacKeown has found a much larger canvas to cover and much more vivid colours on his palette to work with.

From modest beginnings, and a start as a medical doctor (of which no further trace is to be found), the upwardly aspiring John Hennessy, after an early bid at a political career that stumbled at the second election, became one of Britain’s colonial servants. This shift of focus, and the snobbish double-barrelling of the surname, offer MacKeown an opportunity he seizes, which becomes a recurrent leitmotif in what follows. It is to view Pope Hennessy’s—and hence Britain’s late nineteenth century imperial—ascent from one normal and two unusual perspectives.

The normal perspective is that of the ‘Mick on the Make’. That is, the clientelism and jobbery, toadying and finagling that were—and in many respects remain—the essential routes to entry into and subsequent advancement in a governing elite for someone who begins with above

Books

267

threshold abilities, but few other advantages. Pope Hennessy’s life reveals both the paths and the pitfalls, and MacKeown signposts them well.

The unusual perspectives begin with Pope Hennessy’s Irish background as one of the colonised—the subjects of imperium—rather than as one of the colonisers. The other is his Roman Catholicism, or better, his non-membership of the established religion of Britain’s imperial system. The imputation is that these two starting points made Pope Hennessy a better colonial governor because he was more attuned to the afflictions of the colonised and the outcaste, than he was to the pomp and circumstance of the incumbent ascendancy. It is an interesting approach, though one that doesn’t quite come off.

In part, to this reviewer at least, that is because both the second perspectives were far more complex than the simple binaries seem to suggest. Pope Hennessy’s mercurial career needs more, and more complex, interpretative axes.

Inevitably, we soon understand, the ‘normal’ perspective was the one that always had to come first if Pope Hennessy was to achieve the positions that allowed him to achieve anything. Entryism, as it were, always exacts its costs, though they were costs that Pope Hennessy was always more than willing to pay to get the goodies he was sure he deserved.

That brings us to the other constraints on Pope Hennessy achieving more: his own flaws. He had oodles of charm and the gift of the blarney, but in many other respects he seems to have been a poisonous little man. He toadied unmercifully to those he thought would advance his career. He was very far from loyal to those who served him. He was devious and not averse to cooking the books to make himself look good. And, as the Japan Times put it, he was one ‘to whom if fictions be not facts… “then so much the worse for the facts”.’ He treated his wife poorly and his father-in-law shamefully. He neglected his two illegitimate daughters. One also emerges from this book far from convinced that his carefully conspicuous piety was very much more than skin deep.

It is true that his career was marked by his battles to make British colonial government more representative of and more responsive to the interests of the colonised. But in each case one is left with the strong impression that these worthy endeavours were as much about Pope Hennessy’s agenda for Pope Hennessy. Here MacKeown’s leitmotif of Pope Hennessy’s commitment to Ireland for the Irish comes home to roost. Ireland for the Irish as long as Pope Hennessy has a role, as his brief, late-in-life return to British politics suggests.

268

Books

It is accordingly not surprising that his serial governorships—he occupied seven over his 22 years of colonial service—were scarred by not just controversy but bile, and never included a major plum. His constant quest for an Australian governorship always failed either because London would not support him, or the Australian colony wouldn’t accept him. His efforts to move sideways into Foreign Office territory in Japan and China were stymied because he wasn’t trusted.

It is greatly to Kevin MacKeown’s credit that he navigates the complex reefs and shoals of Pope Hennessy’s tortuous and often tortured career with such clarity. As a guide to how Britain’s colonial empire was governed, its pro-consuls chosen, and their policies come upon, this is a splendid book that should be read by anyone interested in this formative agency of the world we now inhabit.

There are stylistic tics that can distract—and should perhaps have been edited out—and occasional repetitions of the sort that are inevitable with books that have been as long in the writing as MacKeown confesses A Stormy Petrel to have been. The book itself is handsome, good to hold and welldesigned. In short, in every respect it is a pleasure to read.

Notes 1

P. Kevin MacKeown, Early China Coast Meteorology: The Role of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011).

Notes for Contributors The Journal welcomes contributions relating to the history, languages, arts, literature, social conditions, and natural history of Hong Kong and the surrounding areas. They may be submitted as Articles (not exceeding 8,000 words including notes), or shorter items for inclusion as Notes.

Contributions should be submitted digitally as an MS Word document. Non-digital copy is not accepted. The text should be typed in double-spacing but otherwise unformatted. Notes should be placed as endnotes and numbered consecutively throughout. A style sheet for the Journal is available either as below or from the Society website http://www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk/journal/ and should be followed as closely as possible.

The Society claims non-exclusive copyright only for publication in its Journal, in printed and online form, with the responsibility and the right to protect it from infringement. Contributors retain the ownership of their published contributions and may use and approve copyright of it in other ways, with recognition of the Society as the original publisher. All facsimile reprints must, however, be first approved by the Society. Further advice on copyright may be sought from the Editor at the addresses below.

Responsibility for opinions expressed by authors in the Journal rests with the individual contributors and not with the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong.

All enquiries, submissions of material and requests for the Style Sheet may be sent to: The Administrator, G.P.O. Box 3864, Hong Kong, or membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk or The Editor, G.P.O. Box 3864, Hong Kong, or editor@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.

Where Chinese characters are required, the Journal uses the full Traditional form. Simplified Chinese characters are used only in special cases.

Publications of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong The Journal The Society has published a Journal since 1961. It was published as the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1961 until 2003. It then changed to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch and is now, since 2018, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong, 香港皇家亞洲學會學報. The Journal is available online: Volumes 1–51 at http://hkjo.lib.hku.hk/exhibits/show/hkjo/browseIssue?book= b27720780 and all volumes at https://www.jstor.org/journal/ jroyaaisasocihkb. Members of the Society receive a copy of the Journal and a regular Newsletter.

Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series In 2005 the Society produced the first volume in this series, the intention being to help make available important studies of the local history, culture and society of Hong Kong and the surrounding region. Generous support from the Sir Lindsay and Lady May Ride Memorial Fund makes it possible to publish this series of works of value both to scholars and to informed general readers. The early volumes were published with Hong Kong University Press, but since 2016 the Society and the Ride Fund have worked with a number of different publishers.

To date the Hong Kong Studies Series includes 30 titles, most of which are hardback books but some of which are also available in softback.

New titles appear from time to time. A list of titles that can be ordered from the Society is on the website at http://www.royalasiaticsociety.org. hk/hong-kong-studies-series. A complete list of titles appears in the Society’s Newsletter, published six times a year, available in e-copy from http://www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk/new-page/. An order form and price list can be found in the Newsletter, or may be obtained directly from the Administrator: membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk.

The Sir Lindsay and May Ride Memorial Fund was established in 2003 by the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong and is named after the ViceChancellor of the University of Hong Kong 1949–64 and his wife, both founder members of the HKBRAS. Other Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Publications Since 1980, in addition to the Journal and the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series, either alone or jointly with other publishers, the Society has published occasional works written or edited by members.

The total of seven titles can be consulted on the Society’s website at http://www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk/books/.