Treaty of Nanking

Treaty of Nanking
Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of China

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Signing of the Treaty of Nanking
Type Bilateral / Unequal
Signed 29 August 1842 (1842-08-29)
Effective 26 June 1843 (1843-06-26)
Condition Exchange of ratifications
Parties
Languages English and Chinese
Treaty of Nanking at Wikisource
Treaty of Nanking
Traditional Chinese 南京條約
Simplified Chinese 南京条约

The Treaty of Nanking (or Nanjing) (traditional Chinese: 南京條約; simplified Chinese: 南京条约), formally called the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of China, was signed on the 29 August 1842 to mark the end of the First Opium War (1839–42) between the United Kingdom and the Qing dynasty of China. It was the first of what the Chinese called the unequal treaties because Britain had no obligations in return.[1]

In the wake of China's military defeat, with British warships poised to attack the city, representatives from the British and Qing Empires negotiated aboard HMS Cornwallis anchored at Nanjing. On 29 August 1842, British representative Sir Henry Pottinger and Qing representatives, Qiying, Yilibu, and Niu Jian, signed the treaty. It consisted of thirteen articles and ratification by Queen Victoria and the Daoguang Emperor was exchanged nine months later.

A copy of the treaty is now kept by the British government, while another copy of the treaty is now kept by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.

Terms

Foreign trade

The fundamental purpose of the treaty was to change the framework of foreign trade imposed by the Canton System, which had been in force since 1760. Under Article V, the treaty abolished the former monopoly of the Cohong and their Thirteen Factories in Canton. Four additional "Treaty ports" opened for foreign trade alongside Canton (Shameen Island from 1859 until 1943): Amoy (Xiamen until 1930), Foochowfoo (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo) and Shanghai (until 1943),[2] where foreign merchants were to be allowed to trade with anyone they wished. Britain also gained the right to send consuls to the Treaty Ports, which were given the right to communicate directly with local Chinese officials (Article II). The treaty stipulated that trade in the treaty ports should be subject to fixed tariffs, which were to be agreed upon between the British and the Qing governments (Article X).

Reparations and demobilization

The Qing government was obliged to pay the British government six million silver dollars for the opium that had been confiscated by Lin Zexu in 1839 (Article IV), 3 million dollars in compensation for debts that the Hong merchants in Canton owed British merchants (Article V), and a further 12 million dollars in war reparations for the cost of the war (VI). The total sum of 21 million dollars was to be paid in installments over three years and the Qing government would be charged an annual interest rate of 5 percent for the money that was not paid in a timely manner (Article VII).

The Qing government undertook to release all British prisoners of war (Article VIII) and to give a general amnesty to all Chinese subjects who had cooperated with the British during the war (Article IX).

The British on their part, undertook to withdraw all of their troops from Nanking and the Grand Canal after the emperor had given his assent to the treaty and the first installment of money had been received (Article XII). British troops would remain in Gulangyu and Zhoushan until the Qing government had paid reparations in full (Article XII).

Cession of Hong Kong

In 1841, a rough outline for a treaty was sent for the guidance of Plenipotentiary Charles Elliot. It had a blank after the words "the cession of the islands of _____". Pottinger sent this old draft treaty on shore, with the letter s struck out of islands and the words Hong Kong placed after it.[3] Robert Montgomery Martin, treasurer of Hong Kong, wrote in an official report:

The terms of peace having been read, Elepoo the senior commissioner paused, expecting something more, and at length said "is that all?" Mr. Morrison enquired of Lieutenant-colonel Malcolm if there was anything else, and being answered in the negative, Elepoo immediately and with great tact closed the negotiation by saying, "all shall be granted—it is settled—it is finished."[3]

The Qing government agreed to make Hong Kong Island a crown colony, ceding it to the British Queen "in perpetuity" (常遠, Cháng yuǎn, in the Chinese version of the treaty), to provide British traders with a harbour where they could unload their goods (Article III). Pottinger was later appointed the first governor of Hong Kong.

In 1860, the colony was extended with the Kowloon peninsula and in 1898, the Second Convention of Peking further expanded the colony with the 99-year lease of the New Territories. In 1984, 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, 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 transferred to the PRC on 1 July 1997.

Aftermath and legacy

Because of the brevity of the Treaty of Nanking and its terms being phrased only as general stipulations, the British and Chinese representatives agreed that a supplementary treaty should be concluded to establish more detailed regulations for relations. On 3 October 1843, the parties concluded the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue at Bocca Tigris outside Canton.

Nevertheless, the treaties of 1842–43 left several unsettled issues. In particular they did not resolve the status of the opium trade. Although the American treaty of 1844 explicitly banned Americans from selling opium, the trade continued as both the British and American merchants were only subject to the legal control of their consuls. The opium trade was later legalised in the Treaties of Tianjin, which China concluded after the Second Opium War.

The Nanking Treaty ended the old Canton System and created a new framework for China's foreign relations and overseas trade which would last for almost a hundred years. From the Chinese perspective, the most injurious terms were the fixed trade tariff, extraterritoriality, and the most favoured nation provisions. These were conceded partly out of expediency and partly because Qing officials did not yet know of international law or understand the long term consequences. The tariff fixed at 5% was higher than before, the concept of extraterritoriality seemed to put the burden on foreigners to police themselves, and most favoured nation treatment appeared to set the foreigners one against the others. Although China regained tariff autonomy in the 1920s, extraterritoriality was not formally abolished until 1943.[4]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Hoe, Susanna; Roebuck, Derek (1999). The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in China Waters. Routledge. p. 203. ISBN 0-7007-1145-7.
  2. ↑ John Darwin, 'After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire', p.431. (London: Allen Lane, 2007)
  3. 1 2 Martin, Robert Montgomery (1847). China: Political, Commercial, and Social; In an Official Report to Her Majesty's Government. Volume 2. James Madden. p. 84.
  4. ↑ Hsu, The Rise of Modern China: 190-92.

References

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  • Fairbank, John King. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.
  • Têng Ssu-yü. Chang Hsi and the Treaty of Nanking, 1842. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.
  • R. Derek Wood, 'The Treaty of Nanking: Form and the Foreign Office, 1842-1843', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (London) 24 (May 1996), 181-196.

External links

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