The primary purpose of my research is to analyse the development of British reactions to and perceptions of the May Fourth Movement manifestations, especially in Shanghai during late 1910's and early 1920's. The aim is to study what kind of implications the British attitudes and reactions had on the development of the May Fourth Movement. Or in other words, the purpose is to identify the various forms of May Fourth activities that resulted from the foreigners' operations and so to determine the extent of the British influence on the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai. By researching the British reactions, the objective is to explore more profoundly their political, economic and cultural hegemony in Shanghai. The three major British groups that are researched here are the governmental and municipal officials, the business community and the missionaries. While I agree with earlier researchers' emphasis on both the ideological and political causes of the Movement and the need for China's democratic liberation, we also need to take account of power relationships between the foreign and Chinese communities. Hence, another purpose of the study is to assess Chinese May Fourth protagonists' activities in relation to the Shanghai foreign community. Accordingly, the focus is also on the dynamics of interaction between the British and Chinese and its impact on the development of the May Fourth Movement. The fundamental hypothesis is that the British reactions affected developments of the May Fourth Movement activities in Shanghai. When elaborated further, this assumption proposes that the contemporary British actions had a certain influence on a subsequent new wave of Chinese anti-foreign and anti-Christian movements. This approach supports the hypothesis that the succeeding outbreak of radical Chinese nationalism was partly influenced by the British reactions to the May Fourth Movement. This research is based on previously closed materials held in the Shanghai Municipal Archives and they are supplemented with sources from British Archives. These include the Jardine, Matheson & Company materials, especially its vast twentieth century correspondence and access to this material was not available until very recently.

This thesis is a study of the diplomacy of China in its quest for sovereign integrity from 1912 to 1922. Such a pursuit began in 1912 when the status quo in China had been accepted by the great powers as the legitimacy which represented a foreign-imposed "treaty rights system" in China. Its central argument is that the foreign policy elite-the President's office and Foreign Affairs Ministry-fundamentally altered Chinese foreign policy during the post-monarchic era. To that end, they gave away the age-old approach of the ancient regime, which had prevailed prior to 1912, and turned to the Western doctrines ranging from sovereignty to the balance of power. This study argues that modem China's diplomacy absorbed the enormous impact of European ideas and forces while pursuing its objectives of sovereign integrity and international equality. Positions in this study are taken up based on the analysis that the foreign policy elite masterminded China's foreign policy in dealing with the most immediate issues of its sovereign integrity and the foreign treaty system. When the 1922 Washington Conference confirmed China's claims for sovereignty, victory went to those who were committed to Chinese involvement in the legitimate system and to those who reacted pragmatically with the great powers. The thesis makes the effort to explain how and why they were able to do this and the consequences of their doing so. The thesis indeed reveals the limitations of the diplomacy of a weak power, like China. But it challenges the current assessments which argue that the policy of the Republic was unrealistic because it pursued a goal beyond its capability, and that its diplomacy was docile, for it was totally dependent upon the great powers' policy instead of its own initiatives. The conclusion presented here unfolds China's quest for sovereignty and how its foreign policy assisting her to realise that goal was based on the pragmatic calculation of domestic political concerns and foreign policy imperatives during that volatile decade. As a result, China's diplomacy in 1912- 1922 should be given a fair and deserved place in modern Chinese history.