Treaty of Nanking
The Treaty of Nanking (Chinese: 南京條約, Nánjīng Tiáoyuē) is the agreement which marked the end of the First Opium War between the United Kingdom and China.
It was signed on 29 August 1842 aboard the British warship HMS Cornwallis in Nanjing (then known as "Nanking"). It is the first of the Unequal Treaties signed by China with a foreign power.
Confrontation
The Queen saw the destruction of British products as an insult and sent the first expeditionary force to defend British's "ancient rights of commerce".[1] The First Opium War (1839-1842) began at the hands of Captain Charles Elliot of the Royal Navy and Capt. Anthony Blaxland Stransham of the Royal Marines. After a series of Chinese defeats, Hong Kong Island was occupied by the British on January 20, 1841. Sir Edward Belcher, aboard the HMS Sulphur landed in Hong Kong, on Jan. 25, 1841.[2] Possession Street still exists to mark the event, although its Chinese name is 水坑口街 ("Mouth of the ditch Street").[2]
Commodore Sir Gordon Bremer raised the Union Jack and claimed Hong Kong as a colony on Jan. 26, 1841.[2] It erected naval store sheds there in April 1841.[3]
Across the Bay, the Portuguese colony of Macao was already established as the oldest Europen settlement in East Asia. Settled as early as 1552, the territory – a small peninsula and some islands - was technically leased from China from 1670, also resisting Dutch ambitions. Like Hong Kong, it reverted to China at the end of 1999. The island was first used by the British as a staging post during the war, and while the East India Company intended to establish a permanent base on the island of Zhoushan, Elliot took it upon himself to claim the island on a permanent basis. The ostensible authority for the occupation was negotiated between Captain Eliot and the Governor of Kwangtung Province. The Convention of Chuenpeh was concluded but had not been recognized by the court of Qing Dynasty at Beijing. Subsequently, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842 under the Treaty of Nanking, at which point in time the territory became a Crown Colony.
The Opium War was ostensibly fought to liberalize trade to China. With a base in Hong Kong, British traders, opium dealers, and merchants launched the city which would become the 'free trade' nexus of the East. American opium traders and merchant bankers such as the Russell, Perkins and the Forbes family would soon join the trade. Britain was granted a perpetual lease on the Kowloon Peninsula under the 1860 Convention of Beijing, which formally ended hostilities in the Second Opium War (1856-1858).
In 1898 the United Kingdom was concerned that Hong Kong could not be defended unless surrounding areas were also under British control. In response a 99-year lease titled the Second Convention of Peking was drafted and executed, significantly expanding the size of the Hong Kong via the addition of the New Territories. The lease would set to expire at midnight, on June 30, 1997.
Integration
The establishment of the free port made Hong Kong a major entrepôt from the start, attracting people from China and Europe alike. Though the society remained segregated and polarized due to language barriers. A de facto segregation existed between the European minority and the Chinese majority.[1] Slow rise of a British-educated Chinese upper class of the late 19th Century forced the creation of racial laws such as the Peak Reservation Ordinance, which prevented Chinese from living in upscale Victoria Peak.[4] The Chinese society had little to no official governmental influence throughout much of the early years. Some of the small number of Chinese elites that the British governors could rely on included Sir Kai Ho and Robert Hotung.[4] They understood where Hong Kong was in terms of development, and served as main communicator and mediator between the citizens and the British politicians making the decision. Sir Kai Ho was an unofficial member of the Legislative Council. Robert Hotung wanted Chinese citizens to recognize Hong Kong as the new home after the fall of China's last dynasty in 1911. As a millionaire with financial influence, he emphasized that no part of the demographics was purely indigenous.[5]
Lifestyle=
The east portion of Colonial Hong Kong was mostly dedicated to the British filled with race courses, parade grounds, barracks, cricket and polo fields. The west portion was filled with Chinese shops, crowded markets and tea houses. The Hong Kong tea culture began in this period and evolved into yum cha. One of the most common breakfasts was congee with fish and barley.
In the mid 1800s many of the merchants would sell silk, jade and consult feng shui to open shops that favour better spiritual arrangements.[6] Other lower ranked groups like coolies arrived with the notion that hard work would better position them for the future. And the success of boatmen, merchants, carters and fishermen in Hong Kong, would leapfrog China's most popular port in Canton. By 1880 Hong Kong's port would handle 27% of the mainland's export and 37% of imports.[1]
A British traveller, Isabella Bird, described Hong Kong in the 1870s as a colony filled with comforts and entertainment only a Victorian society would be able to enjoy. Other descriptions mentioned courts, hotels, post offices, shops, city hall complexes, museums, libraries and structures in impressive manner for the era.[1] Many European businessmen went to Hong Kong to do business. They were referred to as tai-pans or "bigshot". One of the more notable Tai-pan hangout spot was the Hong Kong Club at Queen's Road.[1] Bold text Under the treaty, China agreed to cede Hong Kong Island (together with some small nearby islands) to the British Empire, and open the following treaty ports of China for foreign trade:
(The first of the romanizations are in Postal map spelling, which were used in the treaty; the second Hanyu Pinyin, the modern spellings.)
Also, Great Britain received:
- 21 million ounces silver for compensation
- Fixed tariffs
- Extraterritoriality for British Citizens on Chinese soil
- Most Favored Nation status
In addition to these indemnities, China allowed British missionaries into the interior of China for the first time, and allowed British merchants to establish "spheres of influence" in and around British ports.
The treaty left several unsettled issues. In particular it did not resolve the status of the opium trade with China, which was profitable for the British and devastating to the Chinese. The equivalent American treaty forbade the opium trade, but, as both the British and American merchants were only subject to the legal control of their consuls, the trade continued.
The governments of the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China (PRC) concluded the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong in 1984, under which the sovereignty of the leased territories, together with Hong Kong Island and Kowloon (south of Boundary Street) ceded under the Convention of Peking (1860), was scheduled to be transferred to the PRC on July 1, 1997.
See also
- Opium Wars
- Treaty of Tientsin
- Convention of Peking
- Imperialism in Asia
- History of Hong Kong
- Anglo-Chinese relations
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedWiltshireone - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Base closure to end Royal Navy's Far East presence, Associated Press, November 4, 1997
- ↑ Cavaliero, Eric "Harbour Bed Holds Memories", The Standard, November 12, 1997 Harbour bed holds memories, Retrieved November 3 2007, quoting Melson, P. J White Ensign - Red Dragon: the History of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong 1841 to 1997, Hong Kong: Edinburgh Financial, ISBN 9789627982241
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedWiltshiretwo - ↑ Carroll, John Mark. Edge of Empires:Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005 ISBN 0674017013
- ↑ Lim, Patricia. [2002] (2002). Discovering Hong Hong's Cultural Heritage. Central, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Vol 1 ISBN 0-19-592723-0
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Keay, John. Empire's End A History of the Far East from High Colonialism to Hong Kong. New York: Scribner, 1997 ISBN 9780684815923
- Hanes, William Travis, and Frank Sanello. Opium Wars The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another. Naperville, Ill: Sourcebooks, 2002 ISBN 9781570719318
- Murphey, Rhoads. The Outsiders The Western Experience in India and China. Michigan studies on China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977 ISBN 9780472086795
- Wood, R Derek. 1996. "The Treaty of Nanking: Form and the Foreign Office, 1842-43". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 24, no. 2: 181. ISSN 0308-6534
- Young, Leonard Kenneth. British Policy in China, 1895-1902. Oxford: Clarendon, 1970 ISBN 9780198223160
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