From Colonial India to Semi-Colonial Republican China: Imaginaries and Realities of Civil Service and State-Building in Salt Administration, 1912–45

Abstract This article studies the Sino-Foreign Salt Inspectorate, which was imposed upon a weak Chinese government by an international consortium from 1913 till 1949. The founder of the Salt Inspectorate was Sir Richard Dane, a high-level civil servant in the Indian Civil Service with long experience in salt tax administration in India. This article charts the development of the Salt Inspectorate, considering how it maintained its organisational integrity in a hostile policy environment through core strategies of simplification, bureaucratisation and insulation. The Salt Inspectorate stands as an exemplar of liberal imperial order in its replication of the Indian Civil Service and classic British liberal ideals of political economy, operating in the midst of a dangerous policy environment of civil war, rising nationalism and foreign invasion.