Lowe Kong Meng and the Legacy of the July 1880 Election

CHAPTER 2 Chinese Political Values in Colonial Victoria: Lowe Kong Meng and the Legacy of the July 1880 Election

Paul Macgregor

Abstract

Lowe Kong Meng, pre-eminent merchant and community leader of goldrush Melbourne, was active in Australian politics, self-regarded as a British subject yet engaged with the Qing dynasty, and was likely the first overseas Chinese awarded rank in the Chinese imperial service. Victoria’s mid-1880 election was a watershed: the immediate aftermath was the re-introduction of regulations penalising Chinese, after over 15 years of free immigration and no official discrimination. After the election it was claimed that Lowe Kong Meng persuaded Victoria’s Chinese to vote for the government, but was it in his interests to do so? This chapter examines the nature of Lowe Kong Meng’s engagement in European and Chinese political activity in the colony, as well as the extent of his leadership in Chinese colonial and diasporic life. It further explores how much Lowe Kong Meng could have used that leadership to influence electoral outcomes. The chapter also examines how Lowe Kong Meng and the wider Chinese population of the colony brought changing political agendas to Victoria and developed these agendas through their colonial experiences.

Keywords

Chinese in Australia – Chinese political activity – colonial Victoria

Several members of the House are reported to have been indebted to the Celestial vote at the late contest. Kong Meng, in gratitude for having been made an Exhibition Commissioner, helped to distribute circulars written in Chinese denouncing the Liberal party, and used his influence with the same object, so that his countrymen throughout the Colony polled to a man wherever they could for the party of ‘law and order’. “Atticus” in the Leader, 1880 (reprinted in the Grey River Argus, 10 September 1880: 2)

This account in the Melbourne Leader claimed that the Chinese merchant Lowe Kong Meng (劉光明 Liu Guangming 1831–1888) was able to sway the entire 13,000 Chinese community in Victoria to vote in the July 1880 election for the conservative government led by James Service, against the radical Liberal party led by Graham Berry (Figure 2.1).1 Atticus’ claim came a year and a half after Lowe Kong Meng—along with Cheong Cheok Hong (張卓雄 Zhang Zhuoxiong 1851–1928) and Louis Ah Mouy (雷亞妺 Lei Yamo 1825–1918)—made headlines by publishing an influential pro-Chinese political tract, The Chinese Question in Australia, 1878–79, in Victoria (Lowe Kong Meng et al. 1879). Though there were only 13,000 Chinese in the colony at this time, public anti-Chinese agitation had resurfaced in a campaign in December 1878 directed against attempts by the Australasian Steam and Navigation Company to employ Chinese sea- men. Lowe Kong Meng’s lead in publishing the pamphlet as a counter to this agitation ensured him a high profile among the anti-Chinese campaigners. The Chinese presence in Victoria in 1880 was not a major issue in that election, although the topic did get some airing in the electoral discourse. Of greater concern was debate over electoral reform of the upper house, the Legislative Council, about which there had been three years of political “agitation and turmoil in the colony” (Argus, 8 July 1880: 6). There was no anti-Chinese legisla- tion on the Liberal Opposition’s agenda during the July 1880 election, nor was James Service’s five-month-long conservative Ministerial government of early 1880 promoting a pro-Chinese stance.2 Atticus’ article appears to be the only claim published in the press of the day stating that Lowe Kong Meng was involved in the election campaign, so we should be cautious at taking the claim at face value. If Lowe Kong Meng did act as Atticus said, then the Melbourne Chinese merchant had a major role in Victorian colonial politics. This chapter attempts to assess the veracity and import of the story, by exploring Lowe Kong Meng’s political views, activity and leadership during his life in Melbourne. Lowe Kong Meng appears to have been unique among Chinese merchants in Melbourne’s goldrush era in that he was equally at home among the British and European citizens that made up Victoria’s colonial elite as among the Chinese merchant community. His business, political and civic activities

1 Chinese characters have been included where known to the author. However, some of the Chinese people referred to in this chapter are only known about, at this stage, through mentions in English-language newspapers. 2 This summary of the issues and parties in the July 1880 election is based on a review of arti- cles, election reports and parliamentary debates published in the Melbourne press over the course of July, August and September 1880.