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maintaining Britain’s status as a Great Power in the face of growing economic and political competition from Germany, the United States, France, and Russia. Britain’s victory in the South African War (1899–1902), the most significant imperial event of the period, had two important consequences. One was to tarnish Milner as an illiberal expansionist, charges which played a role in the Unionists’ disastrous
companies in 1928 as unfeasible, as ‘the Chinese would at once want things done their own way’, while Chinese management would lead to abuses, and in 1931 they seemed to their Hong Kong manager to be ‘left behind owing to their illiberal and conservative attitude which they were adopting as contrasted with [Swire’s]’. 70 But others moved on the issue as well. In May 1931 ICI felt that ‘manufacture in China