Anglo-Korean Relations and the Port Hamilton Affair, 18851887
In April 1885 the British navy seized the small archipelago of Port Hamilton (now Geomundo) off Korea, an incident dubbed the Port Hamilton Affair. This was part of a larger story of Empire and East Asian geopolitics involving China, Japan, Korea and Russia. At the time Britain and Russia seemed close to war over Afghanistan, and taking the islands, with their sheltered anchorage, would deny them to Russia while they might be useful in any blockade of the Russian fleet in Vladivostok. However, even in this imperial era, there were qualms about seizing inhabited territory belonging to a friendly nation, if only through the precedent it may set for others particularly Russia to do the same. Thus, Britain stressed that occupation was temporary and attempted to gain legitimate control anyway, through issuing leases. In the event, after much political posturing from East Asian nations, given that the geopolitical situation improved and there was no war with Russia, the British, after assurances that Russia would not take Port Hamilton, slipped away in February 1887. Geomundo returned to obscurity.
This book, the first full-length study of the Port Hamilton Affair, is based around contemporary material varying from printed dispatches and government reports to original archival manuscripts. This enables the books scope to range from setting the Port Hamilton Affair into its context within the high geopolitics of East Asia through study of the life of the garrison stationed on the islands to relations between the powerless indigenous islanders and their British occupiers.
Stephen A. Royle is Emeritus Professor of Island Geography, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queens University Belfast.
Empires in Perspective
Series Editor: Jayeeta Sharma, University of Toronto
This important series examines a diverse range of imperial histories from the early modern period to the twentieth century. Drawing on works of political, social, economic and cultural history, the history of science and political theory, the series encourages methodological pluralism and does not impose any particular conception of historical scholarship. While focused on particular aspects of Empire, works published also seek to address wider questions on the study of imperial history.
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Anglo-Korean Relations and the Port Hamilton Affair, 18851887
Stephen A. Royle
Anglo-Korean Relations and the Port Hamilton Affair, 18851887
Stephen A. Royle
First published 2017
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Contents
Backstory
If the window of the office in which I type these words faced east rather than south, I would overlook the mighty volcano of Sakurajima, which dominates the Japanese city of Kagoshima on the island of Kyushu. For I am currently Visiting Professor at the Kagoshima University Research Center for the Pacific Islands, and this is where this book was written up. My interest in islands, which led to me being here, is long-standing, dating back to a visit my wife and I made to an Irish island called Dursey while on holiday in 1974. My curiosity about the reasons for the decay to be seen around us on that almost-abandoned island changed the focus and perhaps also the trajectory of my career as a geographer, for later I was appointed as Professor of Island Geography at Queens University Belfast (Royle, 2010), from where I moved temporarily to Kagoshima.
As well as two books on the generalities of islands (Royle, 2001; 2014), I have written monographs on the historical geography of St Helena (Royle, 2007) and also Vancouver Island (Royle, 2011), both of which were colonial endeavours. This experience with both islands and Empire was significant when I first became aware of this books subject matter, the Port Hamilton Affair of 18851887. This was on the trip home from a conference in Asia when in the in-flight magazine I came across a brief reference to the Korean islands having once been seized by the British. I decided to enquire into this interesting example of the powerlessness of islands and islanders focused through the lens of Empire, and several years later, this book, a contribution to the Empires in Perspective series, has emerged in consequence.
Sources
The analysis in this book is based largely on an interrogation of a range of contemporary archives available in English. In addition, some other authors have written about the Port Hamilton Affair, sometimes with reference to sources in other languages, and these works will be consulted and cited as appropriate (Chien, 1967; Coy, 1998; Hamilton, 1982; Hoare, 1986; Kim, 1989; organs such as The Times; also regional papers such as the Leeds Mercury and the Glasgow Herald. One of the most useful sources is The Graphic, which published a number of articles on Geomundo, the British military based there and the people of the islands, some of which were illustrated by line drawings.
Book structure
At the heart of this book is the story of the three islands of Geomundo, which surround the extensive, sheltered, water body known to the British as Port Hamilton. In April 1885, the British seized these islands without leave from or reference to their state of Korea or to their residents, and they were held as the de-facto, if never de-jure, eastern edge of the British Empire until February 1887. This aspect of the Port Hamilton Affair is small-scale. In the 1880s, Geomundo was home to a Korean fishing and farming community of about 2,000 people; the resident garrison of British marines on Observatory Island (now called Godo) did not exceed 100 men with, in addition, a fluctuating number of sailors aboard Royal Navy ships which were based at, or visiting, Port Hamilton itself.
