Until the end of the First Opium War, China had existed in a state of splendid
isolation, its ports unavailable to Westerners and their ships for the purposes
of trade and their population ranked in an orderly Confucian ideal from the
rarefied existence of the Celestial Emperor to the lowliest beggar. It seemed
that the rest of the world wanted what China had to offer and the exportation
of tea, textiles and porcelain to the four corners of the globe soon saw
massive trade deficits opening up as the world’s silver funnelled its way into
the Imperial coffers in Peking. What little foreign trade did reach China came
through Arabic intermediaries or through the city of Macao – nominally owned by
the Portuguese – but in the main, China wanted nothing to do with the world
outside its borders.
“We possess all things. I
set no value on objects strange or ingenious and have no use for your country’s
manufactures. Our ways bear no resemblance to yours.”
-Ch’ien
Lung Emperor, to Lord McCartney, George III’s envoy, 1793.
An unscrupulous pair of British merchants
determined to change all this. William Jardine, trader and former officer of
the British East India Company, saw myriad possibilities in trading opium from
India to the Chinese. Teaming up with James Matheson, the son of a baronet with
useful connections to government, the two formed a trading company – Jardine, Matheson’s & Co. but
generally known as Jardine’s – and
began smuggling opium into China by way of Canton.
By means of swift steamships and by using
rivers and canals to penetrate deep inland from the coast, business was soon
booming. Despite the traffic of opium (known to the Chinese as ‘foreign mud’)
being banned under Ch’ing dynasty edict years before, the demand soon
threatened to outstrip supply and it is estimated that, by the late 1830s, 1 in
10 Chinese citizens was an opium addict. At an alarming rate, the flow of
silver into China began to reverse
With the Imperial Treasury facing
bankruptcy, the Chinese government took a stand and sent militia in to
confiscate and destroy stores of opium in trading centres around Canton. This
action prompted Jardine’s and the other opium merchant operations to
demand trade sanctions from the Chinese government. Inevitably rebuffed, Jardine’s mobilised interested parties
in England, financed warships and gun purchases and, on June 19th
1842, implemented the infamous ‘gunboat diplomacy’ which ultimately wrested
control of Shanghai from Peking. This was the First Opium War and established the first of the ‘Unequal Treaties’
which foisted Western rule on coastal China and established Shanghai as,
ultimately, the most depraved city on earth.
The
Unequal Treaties
The
Treaty of Nanking officially
ended the First Opium War and was
signed aboard the HMS Cornwallis on
the 29th of August 1842. Under its terms, Hong Kong was ceded to
British rule and five Chinese ports – Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and
Shanghai – were opened up to foreign trade with substantially reduced tariffs.
War reparation of 21 million silver dollars to be paid to the victors was also
agreed upon. A further agreement – The
Treaty of the Bogue, signed in October the following year – extended these
terms, allowing access to Chinese ports by Western missionaries, giving foreign
settlers the right to build spheres of influence around their trading
establishments, as well as codifying the extraterritoriality (or ‘extrality’)
status of the foreign settlements: treaty port subjects could only be tried for
crimes which they had committed in China by courts of their own nationality. A
further addition to the Treaty of the
Bogue was the infamous ‘Most Favoured Nation’ clause which outlined that
any benefit offered under treaty to one nation would also accrue to every other
treaty nation.
In October, 1856, the Second Opium (or Arrow) War broke out.
Cantonese officials boarded a privateer vessel named the Arrow at the port of Whampoa. The crew was accused of piracy and
smuggling and the ship impounded; despite the vessel having a lapsed
registration to operate out of Hong Kong, the British consulate in Canton
claimed the ship as British property and accused the Chinese customs officials
of having ripped up a British flag during the inspection. Consequently British
forces attacked and seized Canton shortly thereafter. Two years later, the
impasse was lifted by the signing of another Unequal Treaty – The Treaty of Tientsin. This treaty
allowed Britain, France, America and Russia the right to establish legations
within Peking; opened up ten more treaty ports for trade and residence; allowed
foreign ships – including warships – to navigate the Yangtze River; allowed all
foreigners the right to travel within the borders of China for the purpose of
trade or missionary endeavours and forbade the Chinese from using the character
Yi (‘barbarian’) when referring to
British subjects in official correspondence. There was also a heavy
compensation to be paid to the various countries involved, as well as to the British
traders.
Despite agreeing to this treaty, tensions
rose again when the Chinese refused to allow the British to build an embassy in
Peking in 1859. Conflict flared once more and an Anglo-French force stormed the
Imperial capital, setting fire to and looting the Summer Palace. By the end of
1860, British forces were securely holding Northern China (which they did until
April 1862 at the height of the Taiping threat against Shanghai) and another
treaty – The Convention of Peking –
was ratified. This document underscored the previous treaties as well as ceding
Kowloon, part of Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutter’s Island to Britain in
perpetuity and gave part of Outer Manchuria – the Ussuri krai, that part
of the ancient Manchu province known as East Tartary – to Russia.
The
Taiping Rebellion
Internal dissent, corruption, decadence
and a failure to realise the potential threat which the fan kuei (‘foreign
devils’) represented, caught the Imperial Ch’ing court off guard and resulted
in a huge loss of face. The ruling Manchu court was seen as ineffective and
incompetent, especially by those in the more volatile southern provinces.
Although they refused to acknowledge it, the writing was on the wall and the
days of Chinese Imperial rule were numbered.
The
Taiping Rebellion began
with the proclamations of a sickly (and quite possibly mad) individual named
Hung Hsiu-ch’uan who founded ‘The Society of God Worshippers’ in Kwangsi in
1846. Combining a smattering of missionary literature which he’d read with an
inflammatory monologue directed at incoming settlers to the province whose
presence had begun to overtax the land, Hung developed the notion that he was
the brother of Jesus Christ and that God had impelled him to create a ‘Heavenly
Paradise of Great Peace’ (Tai-p’ing T’ien
Kuo). From these crazy and parochial beginnings was launched a fifteen-year
conflict which, by its end, claimed the lives of some 20 to 30 million people.
The tone of the Rebellion rapidly turned from a provincial outbreak to a full-on
attack against the Manchu overlords. The Taiping army began a long march down
the Yangtze towards the sea, eventually capturing Nanking, the old capital
under the Ming dynasty, in 1853. There they established the nascent
headquarters of the ‘Heavenly Paradise’ and started to attract followers. The
Taiping recruits were mainly Chinese from the southern provinces but they
included in their ranks Moslems from the western and north-western regions,
bands of mountain-dwelling outlaws, tired of living rough and a host of the
aboriginal Miao peoples who had been marginalised by the Manchu administration.
In time their numbers would also include western foreigners - mercenary
Britons, Yankees and Frenchmen - seeking fortune and glory.
While striving north to the Manchu
capital of Peking, the Taipings sought targets of opportunity elsewhere,
seeking to consolidate power; inevitably, their attentions were drawn to the
burgeoning boom-town of Shanghai. Strategically important as a military port
and a haven for many refugees fleeing the Taiping advance, the rebel armies
hoped to place a stranglehold on the Manchu capital by cutting off access to
the Yangtze at its source. As well, the Taipings believed that their
pseudo-Christian rhetoric and the common enemy of the Imperial Court would make
the foreign settlements sympathetic and possibly lead to a bloodless coup. Here
too, much as the Imperial forces had done before them, the Taipings
underestimated the tenacity of the foreign community.
The first attempt by the Taipings to open
a dialogue with the Settlements in 1860 met bitter resistance from the combined
Anglo-French forces; a second attempt in 1862 was even less successful as the
Shanghai community had built its own militia – the Ever Victorious Army and the Shanghai
Volunteer Corps – and, with the assistance of the Imperial Forces, had
established a 30-mile perimeter around the city to deflect the Taipings’ incursions.
By 1866 the Taiping Rebellion had
been reduced to a series of regional skirmishes which were quickly put down.
The Rebellion was over.
Yangtsze
Boomtown
“Shanghai is like the Emperor’s ugly
daughter; she never has to worry about finding suitors.”
-Chinese saying
Having thoroughly humiliated the Chinese
during the Opium Wars, the foreign
settlers moved in to consolidate the powers that the Unequal Treaties had given
them. With companies like Jardine’s
leading the way, the trade in opium skyrocketed and it became a commonplace
occurrence for young men from England, France or America to move there to seek
their fortunes. And find them they inevitably did, as long as they didn’t let
their consciences prick them too much. Beginning with the ‘foreign mud’, other
opportunities soon arose in textiles and in transport companies; during the Taiping Rebellion with the refugee
influx, land prices boomed and slumlords made a killing; at this time too,
crafty businessmen made fantastic amounts running guns and other weapons to the
poorly equipped Taiping and Imperialist armies, usually at the same time that
they supplied the forces protecting the foreign communities in Shanghai.
These ‘captains of industry’ soon built
mansions and clubs and stately offices to accommodate themselves and their
heady lifestyles. Nothing was too good: the finest marbles and most precious
woods decorated their dwellings and their daily diets comprised nothing but the
finest European and American cuisine with wines to match. Within their enclaves
and workplaces, these ‘taipans’ lived
like kings and wanted for nothing.
With the burgeoning trade, crime also
flourished. In short order, alongside and often accompanying the seedy opium
dens of the Chinese and French Settlements, brothels proliferated. With men of
all nations in Shanghai outnumbering women at a ratio of about 5 to 1, business
was brisk and soon another industry developed, that of kidnapping women from
country districts and selling them to the bordellos. Syphilis, known to the
local doctors as ‘Canton Sores’ had been introduced from the West by sailors
arriving from Macao in the Eighteenth Century; now the disease was rife
throughout the Shanghai district. Young men arriving from abroad to seek their
fortunes were often required to sign contracts preventing them from being
married in the first five years of their business life with a company (or ‘hong’) and they were frequently sent
home to get engaged during this initial period. Of course, none of this stopped
any man, married or otherwise, wealthy or not, from keeping mistresses and
visiting prostitutes, much to the despair of the local missionaries.
“If God lets Shanghai endure, he owes an
apology to Sodom and Gomorrah”
-Shanghai
Missionary.
With the Treaty of the Bogue, missionaries were soon plentiful in Shanghai.
For the most part, the Catholic missionaries, spearheaded by the Jesuits,
concentrated their efforts on educating and caring for the needy as well as
promoting their holy word. The Protestant missionaries on the other hand became
notorious for fighting bitter crusades against the lawlessness and sinfulness
of the ‘Whore of Asia’ as Shanghai had become known. Their efforts were
invariably mixed: the foreign settlements, while vocal in support of
‘Christianising the locals’, were anything but accommodating in their private
lives; the Chinese, for the most part, wanted nothing to do with a religion
that generally patronised them and recidivism was high amongst converts.
The International Settlements grew and
prospered, surrounding the original walled Chinese City. The English and
American concessions merged into one large International Settlement to the
north of the city while the French Settlement remained staunchly independent to
the south. In 1853 the Municipal Council
of Shanghai was formed to govern the city and it was composed entirely of
foreign stakeholders excluding the Chinese from local government entirely. That
being said, each section of the city had its own courts and police forces and
claimed separate jurisdiction from the others. The British fielded a large
force of Sikh officers recruited from India, supplemented by foreign soldiers
of fortune and some local Chinese translators; the French concession was mostly
composed of Chinese officers under the lax guidance of French commanders. The
Chinese City was left pretty much to its own devices as few foreigners went
there anyway, considering it beneath them to do so. In this environment, crime
inevitably flourished. Where a murderer could kill a man in broad daylight and
evade capture simply by crossing to the other side of a street, criminal activity
burgeoned.
The Boxer Rebellion
The Foreign diplomats had steadily become
used to the manner in which the Chinese conducted their international affairs.
From the Tsungli yamen (‘foreign office’) in Peking, they prevaricated over the
ratification of treaties, quibbled over the wording used, sent representatives
with no plenipotentiary powers to conduct discussions (which could not proceed
as a result) and finally denied having agreed to the treaty in the first place.
Almost inevitably, the foreign powers would resort to force to secure the
agreements they had made. The lessons of 1860 had been learnt well.
The Celestials had run out of tactics in
their diplomatic armoury. Elements within the national government had begun to
look to the West for ways of improving their systems of defense and management,
while other backward-looking factions became resentful and sought for means of
exacting revenge. The rise of yet another secret society, the I Ho Ch’uan (‘The Fists of Righteous
Harmony’, or ‘Boxers’ as the foreign legations came to know them) began
agitating for a wholesale expulsion of foreigners and their ways. Within the
Manchu court, many powerful individuals, the Empress Dowager amongst them,
tacitly supported their thinking.
In June of 1900, Boxer raiding parties
entered the capital and attacked the Foreign Legations. Over the next 55 days,
the eight countries of the foreign community defended themselves in a desperate
attempt to hold them at bay while reinforcements strove to approach from
Tientsing, through countryside swarming with the fanatic legions of the
society, backed sporadically by Imperial troops. The Boxers professed to have
magic powers, charms which repelled the bullets and artillery of the fan kuei; magical rituals which could
revive their dead to fight again; and charmed weapons that could cut through
the enemy’s defences. Many of the Chinese troops engaged by the foreigners were
thrown into a panic by these rumours and the foreign leaders were hampered in
their efforts by having to fight a psychological as well as a physical
conflict.
The Manchu Court initially opted to show
no overt support to the Boxers; however, over time, their directions to the
Imperial Troops became less coy. The Boxers were to be lent every co-operation
in their efforts. Still, elements within the military chose to diplomatically
ignore such orders and, while most were punished by decapitation, enough
remained covert enough so that the defenders in Peking survived and the Boxer
threat was eliminated.
In the aftermath of the ‘Rebellion, further treaties were signed
and quickly ratified in an accord known as the Chefoo Convention: this time, none of the standard Chinese tricks
to avoid committing to the deal were allowed and the whole issue was cleared up
in very short order. The Imperial family, which had evacuated the Forbidden
City and fled to distant provinces, returned shamefaced and were allowed to
resume their rule. However, the writing was on the wall: by 1911, Sun Yat-sen
and his revolutionary forces had rallied and successfully toppled the
Imperials. With the Chinese Revolution,
Imperial China ceased to be and a new, modern age had dawned...
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