Those who nowadays visit the British Embassy in Peking or the recently re-opened Consulate-General in Shanghai can have little idea of the splendour which once marked the British official presence in China. Few now remember that until the 1930s, Britain dominated the China trade, only gradually giving way to the Japanese. British finance was a major factor in the beginnings of China's modernisation. British gunboats patrolled China's rivers and British troops guarded the foreign settlements established along the coast and in the interior of China. Not surprisingly, therefore, throughout China, from the coastal provinces to far up the rivers, in distant cities such as Kashgar and Kunming, and even in remote outposts of the Qing Emperor's domains such as Taiwan and Korea, the Union Jack flew over well-appointed (if all somewhat similar) consular premises, while Her (or His) Majesty's Consuls-General were men of stature and influence in both the Chinese and foreign communities. They sat on councils, conducted courts and helped organise and run clubs, gardens and cemeteries.

Coates tells the story of the British Consular Service in China from its haphazard beginnings in the wake of the first Opium War until its gradual disappearance as China changed under the twin pressures of modernisation and war. By 1943, when Britain and the United States signed treaties which ended a hundred years of extraterritoriality in China, the special status of the China Consular Service, like its counterparts in Japan, Siam and the Levant had already come to an end. Though for a few years longer there were still British consuls in China, they were no longer the specialised cadre they once had been. After 1950, when Britain recognised the new People's Republic of China, the Chinese refused to recognise British consular titles until the 1970s. No doubt memories of the old position of foreign consuls played a part in that decision.

Reading this account of the China consuls, there is a strong temptation to paraphrase Shakespeare, for the tale Coates tells is often a sad one of the death of consuls. How some of syphilis died, some of fever and some – an alarming number – of drink. They were indeed an odd lot. On the whole, they came from lower middle class backgrounds, and were respectable but not grand. Ireland and Scotland were good sources for the China service as they were of the Japanese. They were poorly paid.