An Excerpt from the book........
Since the Europeans were itching for a fight, and they knew they
would prevail with their superior armaments, it didn't take much of an
incident to spark the next armed conflict. Similar to the Gulf of
Tonkin incident a hundred years later, where American naval forces were
itching for the slightest provocation from the Vietnamese - to spark a
strong military response, the incident which sparked the Second Opium
War was relatively insignificant. In October 1856, a vessel of
questionable ownership (it was Chinese, but flying a Union Jack flag),
was boarded by Chinese officials purporting to want to inspect its
cargo.
In response to what would ordinarily have been
a small incident,
the British unleashed cannon fire upon the city of Canton (modern day;
Guangzou). In a fit of alarmism, the Brits were able to incite the
Americans and French to join in the fray. A group of western ships went
on to capture forts near the Tianjin (a.k.a. 'Tienstin'), which was a
major port on the north coast of China, servicing Peking.
In contrast to the First Opium War, twenty
years earlier, the
Second one spread to battles on land. This happened just after
the
Treaty of Tianjin was signed 1858, which allowed Britain and France,
now joined by America and Russia, to trade at 11 additional ports,
besides Canton. Though Quing officials signed the treaty, they were not
content, and denied free movement of western forces to and from the
embassies in Peking which the Quing had been forced to agree to allow.
A siege of a western occupied compound developed in Peking, and western
military forces provoked a series of battles along China's northern
coast, and the landmass between the coast and Peking. The Xianfeng
emperor fled the city. Two summer palaces located on the outskirts of
Peking were destroyed, though buildings in Peking were spared.
A newer version of the Tianjin Treaty was
forced upon the Chinese.
The new wording legalized the importation of opium and, in deference to
Christian missionaries, stipulated freedom of religion for the Chinese
people.
One major result of that, was the Chinese
officially ceded the
then-insignificant island of Hong Kong to the British. At the time,
there were small fishing villages there, and a population of about
1,500. Initially, there was doubt among British officialdom,
whether
it could serve satisfactorily as a port – which was one of Britain's
main concerns at the time. However, they now had their own base for
trading with the mainland and, for the first time, there were no
Chinese officials with their hands out, insisting on commissions at
every step of the trading process. The Brits could develop their own
trading post, from the ground up, on their own terms.
The Chinese official who agreed to the Hong
Kong concession was
named Kishen. The English negotiator, Charles Eliot was at first
ridiculed by his compatriots for agreeing to take a small rocky island
with no built-up resources. Kishen was denigrated, in turn, by fellow
Chinese officials, for ceding Chinese territory to a foreign country.
The initial British settlement was like a
frontier village, with
mostly ramshackle one-story buildings made of wood timber and planks,
nailed together. Inclement weather made short work of destroying such
buildings. Typhoons coming off the Pacific, tore apart warehouses and
tossed merchandise around like fluff. Even so, good amounts of revenue
were coming in from trading commissions, so subsequent buildings were
considerably more sturdy.
Unlike Macao with its Portuguese control,
English traders at Hong
Kong were open to allowing traders from other European countries to do
business there. Chinese workers from the mainland were brought over and
employed in construction projects and support services. The population
of Hong Kong grew to over 20,000 by 1850. Ten years later, the
population grew by an additional 100,000, fueled partly by the troubles
of the Tai Ping Rebellions on the mainland. Many Chinese used Hong Kong
as a stepping stone to new places to work and live. Some went to
California, heeding the call for laborers needed to build the railroad
eastward over the Sierra Nevada mountains there. Others opted to settle
at various other places throughout southeast Asia.
The opium problem didn't get fully settled
with the Opium Wars, so
other conflicts flared to military confrontations. Again, the might of
the British navy prevailed, which led to treaties which expanded Honk
Kong to include the nearby Kowloon Peninsula, up to an east-west street
called, appropriately enough, Boundary Street. This was Britain's first
land possession on the Chinese mainland, and the wording of the treaty
included the words; 'in perpetuity.' In 1898, treaties were again
signed with Chinese authorities, which resulted in the much larger
acreage known as the 'New Territories.' Those official agreements
included over 200 small islands and a few larger ones close to Hong
Kong island, including Lamma and the largest; Lantau. The 1898 treaty
specified that the so-called 'New Territories' were to be handed back
to China in 99 years.
|
|
