As the tourist brochure unambiguously states, the British first occupied Hongkong in 1841 during the Opium War. In fact, the acquisition of Hongkong and the conflict that went with it—one of the most extraordinary encounters in the history of any two nations—cannot be seen in isolation, being the outcome of a historical process of which the development from origins takes us back at least two hundred years prior to 1841, and if the experience of the Portuguese, who were the pioneer Europeans on the China coast, is included, well back over a further hundred years.

For the greater...

On 27th June 1637 four English ships under the command of Captain John Weddell anchored among the rocky grass-covered islands just south of Macao. As chief factor, or commercial officer, of the voyage came Peter Mundy, one of the most travelled Englishmen living, whose diary enables us to have an unusually clear impression of what took place on this, the first English trading voyage to China.

In response to a salute fired by Weddell’s ships a boat was sent out from Macao warning the English not to approach further without the permission of the Portuguese Captain-General. On the second day...

In the thirty-eight years following Weddell’s visit—until I675—the number of English voyages to China can be counted on the fingers, and no voyage was remunerative. Macao, deprived of her Japan trade and thus no longer of use to the Chinese, clung on somehow, only saved from extinction by Jesuit influence in Peking. In I673, when the East India Company’s shipReturnput in to Macao, the English found the city dreadfully impoverished. They stayed there eight months doing cash trade, which was all the Portuguese would allow. Desperate for commerce the Macao authorities, demanding ridiculous prices for small...

In concentrating on the peculiarly detached existence of the China coast, so remote, so specialized in experience, we have without being conscious of it reached the age of Dupleix and Clive, the age in which France and Great Britain fought each other in a war of global dimensions for what was in effect the mastery of the modern world.

The only sign of the Seven Years’ War which China actually saw was an ugly deterioration in the relations between French and British sailors in Canton and Whampoa, where fights and brawls were on such an alarming scale that in I756...

The first attempt to send an embassy came to nothing due to the death of the Ambassador, Colonel Charles Cathcart, while on his way to China in 1788. His instructions are, however, of interest in that they show the trend of British Government thinking, revealing also the care with which Dundas had examined the views expressed in Company documents and by private traders.

Cathcart was to have negotiated with the Chinese Government for the cession to the British Crown of a depot for the marketing and storage of goods. A private letter from Dundas to the envoy suggested that a...

The failure of the macartney embassy—the failure to obtain a British depot in China by a diplomatic approach to Peking—narrowed British possibilities to an arrangement with Portugal concerning Macao, transferring foreign rights there (whatever those rights were) from Portugal to Great Britain, if this could be done without a fracas with the mandarins—in other words, if there were some fully justifiable reason for such a transference.

In 1801 Portugal was invaded by French and Spanish forces. The Directors of the East India Company in London, fearing that this would be the prelude to French attacks on Portugal’s...

During the years from 1800 onwards a number of deeply important changes of a cultural and social nature started to make their impact on the thinking and ways of life of the China coast Europeans. Loosely speaking these developments may be linked together and jointly described as the arrival of English humanitarianism. In relation to the East they symptomatized the growing awareness in England that from trading had come power, and from power responsibility. It was no longer felt sufficient by educated and discerning men to come to the East solely to make money and be damned for the people...

The ‘soft period’ in British relations with the mandarins, which had endured more or less since the Macartney embassy, came to an abrupt end at the termination of Sung’s governorship in 1813, when under senior officials with different ideas things were once more plunged into difficulties. Proceedings in connexion with the murder of a Chinese some years before were resurrected; long and infuriating arguments went on about minor offences the British were alleged to have committed; there were objections to Company letters being submitted in Chinese, objections to Morrison, to his teaching Chinese to others on the staff, to a...

Opium had been contraband in China since Yung Cheng’s edict of 1729. The drug had been reaching China steadily since around 1685 in quantities which tended to rise, the edict having no effect on the trade because its regulations were not enforced. Cotton and opium, it will be recalled, were indispensable to the tea trade. As the volume of the tea trade rose, so did imports of cotton and opium, though towards the end of the eighteenth century with opium now observably gaining ground. The establishment of Canton’s consular corps gave such a spurt to opium that even Peking took...

With the select committee still grappling with the problem of clearing Canton of all Britons at the end of each season, the 1820s saw a revival in the glories of the consular corps. James Matheson represented Denmark; Dent and Company, second only to the Magniacs as an opium house, was the Sardinian Consulate; Ilbery, Fearon and Company represented Hanover; Robert Berry, a private merchant, was Vice-Consul for Sweden. A Scottish country trader, James Innes, did not trouble himself with such niceties. Repeating the tactics of old George Smith a generation before, he simply declined to move and defied the Select...

Jardine, matheson and their friends on the China coast might well inveigh against the East India Company and determine on a forward policy towards the Chinese; a forward policy would require British government assistance, and in London the prevalent attitude in regard to China was totally unfavourable to anything of this kind. Cabinet Ministers and many responsible members of the British public were seriously concerned by the continued growth of the British dominion in India, as with seeming effortlessness one Indian ruler after another came within the shade of the Company umbrella. The practical problems raised—how this vast empire...

As jardine’s clippers sent imports of opium rocketing up, so within China did a phenomenon occur portending developments of great importance. The highest echelon of the Chinese civil service, those few at the top who were the supreme guardians of tradition and security, provincial governors and other officers of long and varied administrative experience, awoke to their responsibility for protecting the health and morals of the people. Not only did they awake but they took action in the form most dangerous to themselves should their words go unheeded or be considered worthless—in the form of memorials submitted through the...

Up till now everything had gone well for Lin, and he shines from whatever angle one looks in a very favourable light. His magnanimity and consideration toward Elliot, once Lin knew that the Englishman was in earnest about surrendering all opium, show Lin Tse-hsii to have been an unusually pleasing person, generous in his response to honour. Indeed the confrontation of Lin and Elliot is a fascinating spectacle. Here in a setting of utter dishonesty, hypocrisy and double-dealing stood, at the head of their respective nations, two men similar in their transparent honesty, in their courtesy and forbearance, and in...

The british frigates, as Elliot afterwards described the event, ‘then lying hove to, on the extreme right of the Chinese force, bore away in a line ahead and close order, having the wind on the starboard beam. In this way, and under sail, they ran down the Chinese line, pouring in a destructive fire. The lateral direction of the wind enabled the ships to perform the the same evolution from the opposite extreme of the line, running it up again with the larboard broadsides bearing. The Chinese answered with their accustomed spirit; but the terrible effect of our own fire...

While charles elliot was in charge there still existed a last chance—quite a good chance, one would be inclined to say—of Great Britain obtaining her demands without inflicting on China a psychological shock producing far-reaching adverse consequences foreseen in some measure by Elliot, John Robert Morrison and the missionary sinologues, but by few others at that time. With Palmerston’s dismissal of Elliot that chance passed, and the Anglo-Chinese\Var entered a sterner phase.

Sir Henry Pottinger, a person of balanced judgement, was better selected than Elliot to carry out Palmerston’s policy in the way the latter wished it to...