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France and the Exploitation of China 1885–1901: A Study in Economic Imperialism . By Robert Lee. [Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989. 358 pp. £26.00.]

The Chinese often describe the deplorable state that befell their nation at the hands of various European countries, the United States and Japan at the end of the 19th century as "the carving of the [Chinese] melon" by the great powers. The melon image implies that everybody got a geographical piece that was their own. While such a carving up did occur to some degree, Robert Lee clearly shows from the French example that imperialism was already learning the modern lesson that direct territorial control is often not as profitable as investment in a weak but still nominally independent territory. This is especially the case when there is strong competition from other imperialist powers to control the same area, as the local government can even serve as a buffer between the great powers. Under such circumstances it can be mutually more profitable to split the financing of projects by combining resources with other powers rather than have each power take exclusive control of territory. Lee demonstrates how French East Asia policy evolved this co-operative attitude between the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin in 1885 in which France acquired Tonkin and 1901 when the French government decided to support a joint British-French mining syndicate in Yunnan.