Hart, Sir Robert, 1st Baronet

Sir Robert Hart, 1st Baronet, (born February 20, 1835, Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland—died September 20, 1911, Fingest Grove, Buckinghamshire, England), Anglo-Chinese statesman employed by the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12) to direct the Chinese customs bureau and thus satisfy Western demands for an equitable Chinese tariff.

A British consular official in China (1854–59), Hart became customs inspector at Guangzhou (Canton; 1859); four years later he was appointed inspector general of the Maritime Customs Bureau, which was organized by Western nations to collect Chinese imperial tariffs on foreign imports.

The bureau, at that time, annually collected more than 8,000,000 taels a year at 14 different ports. Hart expanded the bureau into a department, which by 1895 employed more than 700 Westerners and 3,500 Chinese, and collected more than 27,000,000 taels a year. Hart’s employees not only collected tariffs but also charted the China coast, managed government port facilities, and supervised the lighting of coastal and inland waterways.

By 1896 the department was managing the first modernized national postal service in China. In addition, Hart and his men served as advisers to the dynasty in its dealings with Western countries. Hart retired to England in January 1908 after his office was made subordinate to a bureau of Chinese officials.

Hart was knighted in 1882 and awarded a baronetcy in 1893.