What is happening in The Last Century of Imperial China in 1760CE The most important provisions involved the opening of “treaty ports” to foreign trade extraterritoriality – that is, crimes committed by foreigners – would not be dealt with by Chinese magistrates, but by the relevant Western authority the freedom of movement to Christian missionaries and “most-favoured-nation” status, by which all privileges won by one nation would automatically be applied to all the others which had signed such treaties earlier. They were so called because they were the result of force or the threat of force, and benefitted Western powers at the expense of China. The Treaty of Nanjing was the first of many “unequal treaties” between Western nations and China. This required China to pay Britain a large indemnity to open five ports (including the great cities of Guangzhou and Shanghai) to British trade and residence (so that the merchants need no longer be confined to their ships) to hand over the island of Hong Kong to Britain (at that time barely more than a barren nest of pirates) and to conduct diplomatic relations on a basis of equality with Britain. The Chinese government was thus forced to negotiate, and the Treaty of Nanjing was the result (1842). A Chinese force sent in response to these attacks was destroyed. Later they occupied several coastal cities, including Shanghai, which were the gateways to the richest part of China as well as commanding the routes up both the Yangtze and the Grand Canal. It therefore dispatched an expeditionary force to China.īritish warships destroyed Chinese war junks, and successfully attacked coastal forts. The First Opium WarĮven though there was a strong feeling in Britain against the opium trade (selling opium was, after all, illegal in Britain), the British government came to believe that all trade with China, legal as well as illegal, was under grave threat and that it could not be seen to be failing to protect British commerce. Twenty one thousand chests were handed over and their contents destroyed. This culminated in March 1839, when all foreign merchants were required to hand over their stocks of opium, on penalty of death. In 18 a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign to suppress opium smuggling around Guangzhou took place. Calls were rising that the trade should be stamped out, by force if need be. The huge demand for opium had reversed the balance of trade so that there was now a net outflow of silver from China. In the 1820s almost 20,000 chests were entering the country each year. On the Chinese side, there was growing alarm at the growth of opium smuggling. The feeling grew that things needed to change, by force if necessary. Repeated requests to open negotiations with the Chinese court were ignored.

Growing tensionsĬommercial interests back home in Britain, for their part, were increasingly frustrated by the way that the potentially huge Chinese market was largely closed to them.

The British sea captains now refuse to hand over members of their crew, however guilty, to the Chinese authorities. One particular issue was that, when European sailors committed crimes in Guangzhou and come before Chinese magistrates, they are liable to cruel punishments which, though normal in China, had never been practiced, or had long fallen into disuse, in Europe. Isolated in Guangzhou, the only port in which they were allowed to operate, strictly regulated, not allowed to live on shore, and their trade subject to stoppages by what seemed like the arbitrary whims of officials, they found life increasingly difficult. What is happening in The Last Century of Imperial China in 1842CEĭuring the early 19th century, Western merchants in China – and in particular by far the largest group of them, the British – became increasingly dissatisfied with the way in which they were treated.

Guangzhou port map